The cover of Harper’s Magazine, October 2004, depicting the whitewashing of the 9/11 Commission.
[Source: Harper's Magazine]Bucking the trend of generally positive reviews of the 9/11 Commission’s final report, Harper’s Magazine publishes a cover story harshly criticizing the report. The story opines, “The plain, sad reality… is that The 9/11 Commission Report, despite the vast quantity of labor behind it, is a cheat and a fraud. It stands as a series of evasive maneuvers that infantilize the audience, transform candor into iniquity, and conceal realities that demand immediate inspection and confrontation.… In the course of blaming everybody a little, the Commission blames nobody—blurs the reasons for the actions and hesitations of successive administrations, masks choices that, fearlessly defined, might actually have vitalized our public political discourse.”
[Harper's, 10/2004]

Osama bin Laden sends a letter to al-Qaeda leader Abu Faraj al-Libbi, and US intelligence will learn about this a year or so later. This is one of the very few pieces of evidence known by US intelligence that suggests bin Laden is alive, after bin Laden escaped from Tora Bora, Afghanistan, in late 2001. Al-Libbi has been al-Qaeda’s operational commander since early 2003. Guantanamo File Account - In April 2011, the non-profit whistleblower group Wikileaks will release the Guantanamo prison assessment file of al-Libbi, dated September 2008. According to this assessment, which is likely based on al-Libbi’s interrogations, al-Libbi receives a letter from bin Laden in October 2004 asking about al-Qaeda’s financial situation in Pakistan and especially Waziristan (part of Pakistan’s tribal region). Al-Libbi also gets a videotape of bin Laden’s speeches. (Note that the first video footage of bin Laden is publicly released in late October 2004 (see October 29, 2004).) Al-Libbi gets the letter and videotape from bin Laden’s courier, who first met up with al-Libbi in July 2003 (see July 2003-Mid-2004). [US Department of Defense, 9/10/2008]Musharraf's 2006 Book - In a 2006 book, Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf will similarly mention that al-Libbi “was in contact with Osama through a courier and the last letter he had received from Osama was sometime in December 2004. We have been looking for the couriers intensely.” [Musharraf, 2006, pp. 172] Al-Libbi will be captured in May 2005, and apparently he is interrogated by Pakistan for a few days, and then turned over and interrogated much more by the US (see May 2, 2005). So different interrogations may explain the slightly different months mentioned in each account. Bin Laden’s courier will later be revealed to be Ibrahim Saeed Ahmed, and the US effort to track him will eventually lead to bin Laden (see May 2, 2011).

Lt. Col. Anthony Christino III, a 20-year military intelligence veteran who spent six months in 2003 working as “senior watch officer” with a Joint Intelligence Task Force, says that material he reviewed from Guantanamo indicated that the administration had “wildly exaggerated” the intelligence value of the Guantanamo detainees. The process of screening captives at Bagram for detention at Guantanamo was “hopelessly flawed from the get-go,” he says. The personnel that conducted the screening were “far too poorly trained to identify real terrorists from the ordinary Taliban militia.” Most of the Guantanamo detainees had no connection to al-Qaeda, Christino said, adding that Gen. Geoffrey D. Miller’s system would have only produced false confessions. [Observer, 10/3/2004] He also says it is doubtful that Guantanamo prisoners possessed any important intelligence concerning al-Qaeda. Anyone claiming to have such information probably fabricated it in response to the awards and punishment policy instituted by General Miller. Christino’s account is supported by an FBI official whose job it is to track suspected terrorists. The official tells the Guardian, “I’m unaware of any important information in my field that’s come from Gitmo. It’s clearly not a significant source.”
[Guardian, 10/3/2004]

Author Mike Ruppert. [Source: From the Wilderness]Mike Ruppert, a former detective with the Los Angeles Police Department, publishes Crossing the Rubicon, in which he argues that al-Qaeda lauched the 9/11 attacks, but certain individuals within the Bush administration, the US Secret Service, and the CIA not only failed to stop the attacks but prevented others within government from stopping them. In contrast to other prominent skeptic literature (see, for example, November 8, 2005 and March 20, 2006), Ruppert focuses on non-physical evidence. He believes that those responsible for the attacks intended to use it as a pretext for war in the Middle East with the intention to gain control of a large amount of the planet’s oil reserves, which he thinks will soon start to run out, forcing prices higher. He also discusses the various war games on 9/11 (see (9:00 a.m.) September 11, 2001 and (9:40 a.m.) September 11, 2001), allegations of insider trading before the attacks (see Early September 2001), whether the CIA had a hand in thwarting the Moussaoui investigation (see August 20-September 11, 2001), and US relations with Pakistan and Saudi Arabia (see October 7, 2001 and January 2000)). [Ruppert, 2004]

Knight Ridder Newspapers reveals that a new CIA report released to top US officials the week before says there is no conclusive evidence linking Islamist militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and the former Iraqi government of Saddam Hussein. The CIA reviewed intelligence information at the request of Vice President Dick Cheney some months before. One official familiar with the report says it does not make clear judgments, and the evidence of a possible link is murky. For instance, the report claims that three of al-Zarqawi’s associates were arrested by the Iraqi government before the Iraq war, and Hussein ordered one of them released but not the other two. The report doubts that al-Zarqawi received medical treatment at a Baghdad hospital in May 2002, and flatly denies reports that al-Zarqawi had a leg amputated there or anywhere else (see January 26, 2003). One US official says, “The evidence is that Saddam never gave al-Zarqawi anything.” Several days after the report is given to top officials, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld backs away from previous claims he had made of a link between Hussein and al-Qaeda, saying, “To my knowledge, I have not seen any strong, hard evidence that links the two.” It is widely acknowledged that al-Zarqawi spent time in Iraq before the start of the Iraq war, but he generally stayed in a border region outside of Hussein’s control. [Knight Ridder, 10/4/2004]

A US PSYOP leaflet disseminated in Iraq showing a caricature of al-Zarqawi caught in a rat trap. The caption reads: “This is your future, Zarqawi.” [Source: US Department of Defense]The Telegraph reports that US military intelligence agents in Iraq believe that the role of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the supposed leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq, has been greatly exaggerated. The Bush administration has used al-Zarqawi as a villain to blame post-invasion troubles in the Iraq war and to connect the Iraqi insurgency to al-Qaeda (see February 9, 2004). [Daily Telegraph, 10/4/2004] For instance, in April 2004, US military spokesman Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch said that more than 90 percent of the suicide attacks in Iraq were carried out by terrorists recruited and trained by al-Zarqawi. [Washington Post, 6/10/2006] The Telegraph reports: “US military intelligence agents in Iraq have revealed a series of botched and often tawdry dealings with unreliable sources who, in the words of one source, ‘told us what we wanted to hear… We were basically paying up to $10,000 a time to opportunists, criminals, and chancers who passed off fiction and supposition about al-Zarqawi as cast-iron fact, making him out as the linchpin of just about every attack in Iraq… Back home this stuff was gratefully received and formed the basis of policy decisions. We needed a villain, someone identifiable for the public to latch on to, and we got one.’” Millitary intelligence officials believe that the insurgency is dominated by Iraqis and that the number of foreign fighters such as al-Zarqawi could be as low as 200. However, some of these officials complain that their reports to US leaders about this are largely being ignored. [Daily Telegraph, 10/4/2004] In 2006, leaked classified US military documents will show that the US military ran a propaganda campaign from at least early 2004 to exaggerate al-Zarqawi’s importance in the US and Iraqi media (see April 10, 2006).

Accused terrorist Yaser Esam Hamdi returns to Saudi Arabia aboard a US military jet. Earlier in 2004, the US Supreme Court ruled that the US government could not continue to hold Hamdi, a US citizen, as an enemy combatant without allowing him to challenge that status (see June 28, 2004). The US government was still free to bring charges against him but instead chose to negotiate with his attorneys about a release. In exchange for his release, Hamdi agrees to renounce his US citizenship and pledge never to travel to Afghanistan, Iraq, Israel, Pakistan, Syria, the Palestinian West Bank, or Gaza. He must also report any intent to travel outside Saudi Arabia. [CNN, 10/14/2004]'Shocking Admission' of Lack of Criminal Case against Hamdi - Andrew Cohen comments in the Los Angeles Times, “If Hamdi is such a minor threat today that he can go back to the Middle East without a trial or any other proceeding, it’s hard not to wonder whether the government has been crying wolf all these years.” He calls the release “a shocking admission from the government that there is not now, and probably never has been, a viable criminal case against Hamdi.” [Los Angeles Times, 8/16/2004]Hamdi Case Used to Set Favorable Precedent? - Author and reporter Charlie Savage will agree with Cohen. “Hamdi’s release meant that a prisoner who the White House had once sworn was too dangerous to be allowed access to a lawyer was now going free—just like hundreds of prisoners from Guantanamo who were held without trial for years and then quietly released,” Savage will write. He will note that many administration critics believe Hamdi’s case had been used as a tool by the administration to get a favorable judicial precedent and, once that precedent had been put in place, the administration had no more use for Hamdi and threw him out of the country rather than actually continue with a problematic trial or legal proceeding. [Savage, 2007, pp. 199-200]

A group of more than 650 Western foreign affairs specialists, calling themselves “Security Scholars for a Sensible Foreign Policy,” write an “Open Letter to the American People,” which says: “American actions in Iraq, including but not limited to the scandal of Abu Ghraib, have harmed the reputation of the US in most parts of the Middle East and, according to polls, made Osama bin Laden more popular in some countries than is President Bush. This increased popularity makes it easier for al-Qaeda to raise money, attract recruits, and carry out its terrorist operations than would otherwise be the case.”
[Anti-war (.com), 10/12/2004]

Mamoun Darkazanli. [Source: Associated Press]Mamoun Darkazanli, under investigation for ties to al-Qaeda long before 9/11, is finally arrested in Germany. The Chicago Tribune calls him “one of the most elusive and mysterious figures associated with al-Qaeda and the Sept. 11 hijackers.” He has been living openly in Germany since the 9/11 attacks. The reason for the timing of the arrest is unclear, but there is speculation it may be to preempt an attempt by Darkazanli to apply for asylum in Syria, the nation of his birth. Because German anti-terrorism laws were so weak until after 9/11, he cannot even be convicted of financing terrorism. However, he is also wanted in Spain where prosecutors have been building a case against him and his associates. Germany says it intends to extradite him to Spain, but Darkazanli claims he’s innocent and is going to fight the extradition. [Chicago Tribune, 10/15/2004]

A nationwide Harris Poll conducted among 1,016 US adults finds that 63 percent of the respondents “believe that Iraq, under Saddam Hussein, was a serious threat to US security.” Slightly less, 62 percent, say they believe that Saddam Hussein “had strong links to al-Qaeda.” 41 percent of those polled say that Saddam Hussein “helped plan and support” the 9/11 hijackers and 37 percent believe that several of the hijackers were Iraqis. 38 percent say that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction at the time of the US invasion. [Harris Poll, 10/21/2004]

Abdurahman Alamoudi. [Source: Wikipedia/ public domain]Muslim activist Abdurahman Alamoudi is sentenced to 23 years in prison in the US for illegal dealings with Libya. Charges include that he was involved in a complex plot to kill Crown Price Abdullah, the de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia. Prosecutors successfully argued that Alamoudi served as a go-between Saudi dissidents and Libyan officials involved in the plot. Alamoudi admitted that he illegally moved money from Libya, taking nearly $1 million and using it to pay conspirators. The plot, thought to stem from a personality dispute between the leaders of Libya and Saudi Arabia, was ultimately foiled by the Saudi government. The Washington Post notes that Alamoudi was “one of America’s best-known Muslim activists—a former head of the American Muslim Council who met with senior Clinton and Bush administration officials in his efforts to bolster Muslim political prominence.” He was “once so prominent that his influence reached the highest levels of the US government.” Alamoudi is said to be cooperating with US investigators as part of the deal. It is believed that his testimony could be very useful to an ongoing probe of the SAAR network, since he was closely involved with that network (see March 20, 2002). [Washington Post, 10/16/2004]

Islamist militant leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and his group al-Tawhid pledges loyalty to bin Laden in a statement posted on the Internet. He states, [Let it be known that] al-Tawhid pledges both its leaders and its soldiers to the mujahid commander, Sheikh Osama bin Laden…” [Bergen, 2006, pp. 364] Bin Laden and al-Zarqawi began discussing the possibility of an alliance in early 2004 (see Early 2004). There had been other occasional contacts and linkages between al-Zarqawi and his group in years past, but al-Zarqawi had generally maintained his independence from al-Qaeda. Just one month earlier, al-Zarqawi stated, “I have not sworn allegiance to [bin Laden] and I am not working within the framework of his organization.” [Newsweek, 4/4/2005] The Atlantic Monthly will later report that at the same time al-Zarqwai made his loyalty oath, he also “proclaimed himself to be the ‘Emir of al-Qaeda’s Operations in the Land of Mesopotamia,’ a title that subordinated him to bin Laden but at the same time placed him firmly on the global stage. One explanation for this coming together of these two former antagonists was simple: al-Zarqawi profited from the al-Qaeda franchise, and bin Laden needed a presence in Iraq. Another explanation is more complex: bin Laden laid claim to al-Zarqawi in the hopes of forestalling his emergence as the single most important terrorist figure in the world, and al-Zarqawi accepted bin Laden’s endorsement to augment his credibility and to strengthen his grip on the Iraqi tribes. Both explanations are true. It was a pragmatic alliance, but tenuous from the start.” [Atlantic Monthly, 6/8/2006] In December 2004, an audiotape said to be the voice of bin Laden acknowledges al-Zarqawi’s comments. “It should be known that the mujahid brother Abu Musab al-Zarqawi is the emir of the al-Qaeda organization in [Iraq]. The brothers in the group there should heed his orders and obey him in all that which is good.” [Bergen, 2006, pp. 364-365]

Shyam Sunder. [Source: NIST]The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) releases nearly 500 pages of documents, detailing the latest findings of its investigation of the WTC collapses on 9/11. These include its hypotheses for the collapse sequences of each of the Twin Towers; details of their analysis of interviews with nearly 1,200 building occupants, emergency responders, and victims’ relatives; and information from their analysis of the emergency response and evacuation procedures. Their investigation into the collapses is based upon an analysis of thousands of photos and videos, examination of many of the elements used to construct the towers, and computer-enhanced modeling of the plane impacts and the spreading of the fires. Their hypothesis is that the towers collapsed ultimately due to the fires they suffered: As the fires burned, the buildings’ steel core columns buckled and shortened. This shifted more load to the buildings’ perimeter columns, which were already affected by the heat of the fires, and caused them to give way under the increased stress. Investigators have conducted a test with a reconstructed section of the WTC floor, and found that the original fireproofing was sufficient to meet the New York City building code. They say that had a typical office fire occurred in the towers, without the structural damage and the loss of some fireproofing caused by the plane impacts, it is likely the buildings would have remained standing. Lead investigator Dr. Shyam Sunder says, “The buildings performed as they should have in the airplane impact and extreme fires to which they were subjected. There is nothing there that stands out as abnormal.” NIST’s theories of why the WTC buildings collapsed conflict with an earlier investigation by FEMA, which claimed the collapse of the North Tower had begun in its core, rather than its perimeter columns (see May 1, 2002). [National Institute of Standards and Technology, 10/19/2004; New York Times, 10/20/2004]

Jimmy Walter.
[Source: Publicity photo]Jimmy Walter, a millionaire from California, spends more than $5 million promoting the theory that there was a US government conspiracy behind the 9/11 attacks. Walter, the heir to an $11 million fortune, runs full-page adverts in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the New Yorker, and Newsweek. He also runs television adverts: One of these questions why Building 7 of the World Trade Center collapsed on 9/11 despite not being hit by any plane, another suggests that Flight 77 never flew into the Pentagon. He offers a prize of $1 million to anyone who can prove that the WTC buildings collapsed in the way the US government says, without the use of explosives. Walter tells the New York Times, “It just isn’t possible that 19 screw-ups with box cutters pulled this whole thing off.” He also helped to pay for a Zogby poll, which found two-thirds of New Yorkers wanted the 9/11 investigation reopened (see August 30, 2004). [New York Times, 11/8/2004; CNN, 11/10/2004; CNN, 11/11/2004; Reuters, 12/16/2004; Sydney Morning Herald, 11/21/2005]

Leo Strauss. [Source: Publicity photo]The BBC airs a three-part documentary entitled “The Power of Nightmares: The Rise of the Politics of Fear.” It is directed by Adam Curtis, who the Guardian calls “perhaps the most acclaimed maker of serious television programs in Britain.” The documentary argues that much of what we have been told about the threat of international terrorism “is a fantasy that has been exaggerated and distorted by politicians. It is a dark illusion that has spread unquestioned through governments around the world, the security services, and the international media.” The documentary begins by focusing on Sayyid Qutb in Egypt and Leo Strauss in the US. Both developed theories in the 1950’s and 1960’s that liberalism and individualism was weakening the moral certainties of their societies. Qutb has a strong influence on Islamic Jihad leader Ayman al-Zawahiri, and then through him, Osama bin Laden. Strauss meanwhile has a strong effect on neoconservatives such as Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, and Paul Wolfowitz, who all eventually gain prominent positions in George W. Bush’s administration. The documentary follows the rise of Islamic radicals and compares and contrasts this with the rise of the neoconservatives. Curtis argues that both groups have greatly benefited from 9/11, because both have been able to use fear of terrorism to gain widespread popular support. Curtis claims that al-Qaeda is not the highly centralized, widespread, and powerful organization that it is frequently depicted to be. Rather, it is more of a concept and loose alliance of groups with coinciding interests. He says, “Almost no one questions this myth about al-Qaeda because so many people have got an interest in keeping it alive.” The documentary gains favorable reviews in newspapers such as the Los Angeles Times, Christian Science Monitor, and the Guardian. [Christian Science Monitor, 10/18/2004; BBC 2, 10/20/2004; BBC 2, 10/27/2004; BBC 2, 11/3/2004; BBC 2, 11/3/2004; Los Angeles Times, 1/11/2005]

Deputy Homeland Security Adviser Richard Falkenrath. [Source: US State Department]The Washington Post reports that President Bush remains focused on the capture of top al-Qaeda leaders and has shown little interest in other counterterrorism efforts. The Post reports, “Bush conducts the war on terrorism above all as a global hunt for a cast of evil men he knows by name and photograph. He tracks progress in daily half-hour meetings that Richard A. Falkenrath, who sometimes attended them before departing recently as deputy homeland security adviser, described as ‘extremely granular, about individual guys.’” Falkenrath says, “This is a conversation he’s been having every day, more or less, with his senior advisers since September 11th.” It covers “the same people, over and over again.” "Decapitate the Beast" - In 2002, the CIA identified about 30 al-Qaeda leaders known as “high-value targets,” and the Bush administration believed al-Qaeda would collapse without them. White House counterterrorism adviser Frances Townsend similarly says Bush’s strategy since 9/11 has been to “decapitate the beast.” She says the men on the list have “unique expertise, experience, or access.” Al-Qaeda may replace them, “but does that person have the same strength and leadership and capability? The answer is no. Maybe he acquires it on the job, but maybe not.” However, many counterterrorism experts increasingly believe that al-Qaeda has turned into more of an ideology than a hierarchical structure, and that the movement can easily survive the loss of its top leaders. Crossing Names Off a List - Since shortly after 9/11, Bush has had a card containing a list of the names of the top al-Qaeda leaders, and he likes to personally cross them off the card whenever any are captured or killed. The Post says that Bush “mentions little else, save the Taliban’s expulsion from power, when describing progress against al-Qaeda. According to people who have briefed him, Bush still marks changes by hand” on his copy of list of leaders. He sees the issue largely in terms of a battle of wills between himself and al-Qaeda leaders, although he also focuses on removing the governments of countries he believes are state sponsors of terrorism, such as Iraq. Bush Not Interested in Root Causes of Terrorism - Bush is uninterested in polls showing sharply rising anti-US sentiment overseas, particularly in Muslim countries. One high high-ranking national security official says of the increasing Muslim hostility to the US, “I don’t think it matters.” Many counterterrorism experts and officials disagree. Wayne Downing, Bush’s counterterrorism “tsar” from late 2001 until early 2004, says that Osama bin Laden has worked effectively to “convince the Islamic world the US is the common enemy.… We have done little or nothing [to combat this perception]. That is the big failure.” The Post says that “strong majorities of several dozen officers and officials who were interviewed… cite a long list of proposals to address terrorism at its roots that have not been carried out.” [Washington Post, 10/22/2004]

Former President Jimmy Carter says in an interview, “President Bush has exploited the September 11, 2001, attacks for political gain.” He adds: “I think the basic reason is that our country suffered, in 9/11, a terrible and shocking attack… and George Bush has been adroit at exploiting that attack and he has elevated himself, in the consciousness of many Americans, to a heroic commander in chief, fighting a global threat against America. He’s repeatedly played that card, and to some degree quite successfully.” [Reuters, 10/25/2004]

James Pavitt.
[Source: Publicity photo]James Pavitt, the CIA’s Deputy Director of Operations, states, “Given what we now know, in all the hindsight of the year 2004, I still do not believe we could have stopped the [9/11] attacks.” [New York Times, 10/27/2004] Pavitt is said to be heavily criticized in a still-classified CIA report about that agency’s failures to stop the 9/11 attacks (see January 7, 2005).

CIA officer Rolf Mowatt-Larssen. [Source: Department of Energy]The CIA analyzes bin Laden’s new speech, which was released four days before the US presidential election (see October 29, 2004), and concludes that it improves George Bush’s reelection chances. According to author Ron Suskind, the CIA, which has “spent years… parsing each word of the al-Qaeda leader,” knows that “bin Laden speaks only for strategic reasons—and those reasons are debated with often startling depth inside the organization’s leadership.” The analysts conclude that “bin Laden’s message was clearly designed to assist the president’s reelection.” Deputy Director John McLaughlin says in a meeting analyzing the speech, “Bin Laden certainly did a nice favor today for the president.” CIA deputy associate director Jami Miscik similarly comments, “Certainly, he would want Bush to keep doing what he’s doing for a few more years.” However, the CIA does not discuss why bin Laden wants Bush to stay. Suskind will write, “But an ocean of hard truths before them—such as what did it say about US policies that bin Laden would want Bush reelected—remained untouched.” CIA officer Rolf Mowatt-Larssen will later say: “It was sad. We just sat there. We were dispirited.” Several National Security Council members have already reached the conclusion that bin Laden’s presence on the international stage helps Bush (see October 29, 2004). Both presidential candidates condemn bin Laden. John Kerry says, “As Americans, we are absolutely united in our determination to hunt down and destroy Osama bin Laden.” George Bush says, “Americans will not be intimidated or influenced by an enemy of our country.” [Suskind, 2006, pp. 335-6] Several commentators believe the intervention will help Bush, for example: Veteran journalist Walter Cronkite says, “I have a feeling that it could tilt the election a bit. In fact, I’m a little inclined to think that Karl Rove, the political manager at the White House, who is a very clever man, he probably set up bin Laden to this thing.” [CNN, 10/29/2004] Roger Simon of US News and World Report says, “I don’t have any trouble parsing out who this helps. I think this is an enormous boost for George Bush.” [CNN, 10/29/2004] MSNBC host Chris Matthews says, “The big thing in politics, of course, is picking the right topic… This creates a terrible situation for the challenger, because it seems to me that Karl Rove has his finger on this.” [MSNBC, 10/29/2004] MSNBC correspondent Andrea Mitchell says, “It makes it harder for Kerry, and it shifts the subject matter back to what George Bush is strongest on. So the Bush people may not say that they are happy about this, but I’m sure that they could not be more pleased that this is the subject of the closing days. How do you say October surprise? This is one that could benefit the president.” [MSNBC, 10/29/2004] CNBC co-host Lawrence Kudlow says, “It will play into Bush’s hands.… it falls into Bush’s lap. And unlike 2000, I think it’s the kind of thing that will cause the remaining undecided voters in the next 72 hours or so to break for Bush.” [MSNBC, 10/29/2004] Weekly Standard staff writer Stephen Hayes says, “I think that, as most people have indicated, that is likely to help President Bush.” [MSNBC, 10/29/2004]Other commentators from across the political spectrum who suggest the speech will help Bush include Fox News correspondent Major Garrett, Boston Herald columnist Mike Barnicle, Time magazine correspondent Karen Tumulty, former plumber G. Gordon Liddy, former presidential candidate Pat Buchanan, MSNBC host Joe Scarborough, the Cook Political Report editor and publisher Charlie Cook, Washington Post journalist Jeffery Birnhaum, and Roll Call executive editor Morton Kondracke. [Fox News, 10/29/2004; Fox News, 10/29/2004; CNN, 10/29/2004; MSNBC, 10/29/2004; MSNBC, 10/29/2004] Some right wing commentators suggest that the tape will help Kerry, including Fox News political commentator Dick Morris, Weekly Standard executive editor Fred Barnes, Washington Times reporter Bill Gertz, Fox News host Sean Hannity, and author Peggy Noonan. [Fox News, 10/29/2004; Fox News, 10/29/2004; Fox News, 10/29/2004; Fox News, 10/29/2004] A Newsweek poll shows that Bush’s lead increases after the tape is released and, after the election, John Kerry, the losing Democratic candidate, will attribute his failure to bin Laden’s intervention: “We were rising in the polls until the last day the tape appeared. We flat-lined the day the tape appeared, and went down on Monday.” [Daily Telegraph, 11/1/2004; MSNBC, 1/30/2005] George Bush will also agree that the tape helped, saying, “I thought it was going to help. I thought it would help remind people that if bin Laden doesn’t want Bush to be the president, something must be right with Bush.” [Reuters, 3/1/2006]

Several members of the National Security Council conclude that Osama bin Laden’s presence on the international stage is helping George Bush’s presidential campaign. (The CIA has apparently concluded the same (see October 29, 2004 and October 29, 2004).) Author Ron Suskind will write, “While the CIA glimpsed at the issue of bin Laden’s motivations and turned away, there were those who understood just how acutely this heated, global dialog—of ideas and message and the preservation of power, of us and them—was a two way street. On that score, any number of NSC principals could tell you something so dizzying that not even they will touch it: that Bush’s ratings track with bin Laden’s ratings in the Arab world. No one doubts that George Bush is earnest when he thinks of the victims of 9/11 and speaks of his longing to bring the culprits to justice. Yet he is an ambitious man, atop a nation of ambitious and complex desires, who knows that when the al-Qaeda leader displays his forceful presence, his own approval ratings rise, and vice versa.” [Suskind, 2006, pp. 336-7]

Bin Laden makes his Towers of Lebanon speech. [Source: Al-Jazeera]Four days before the presidential election in the US, Osama bin Laden releases a new video in which he addresses the US people and alludes to his role in 9/11. The tape was handed to an employee at Al Jazeera’s bureau in Islamabad, Pakistan, on the day it was broadcast. [MSNBC, 10/30/2004]Bin Laden Had Idea of 'Destroying Towers in America' - In his strongest admission yet that he was involved in planning 9/11, bin Laden says, “Allah knows that the plan of striking the towers had not occurred to us, but the idea came to me when things went just too far with the American-Israeli alliance’s oppression and atrocities against our people in Palestine and Lebanon.” After likening the US and Israel to “a crocodile devouring a child,” he continues, “As I looked at those destroyed towers in Lebanon, it occurred to me to punish the oppressor in kind by destroying towers in America, so that it would have a taste of its own medicine and would be prevented from killing our women and children.” He attempts to isolate the US from other Western countries, pointing out that “security is one of the pillars of human life” and that al-Qaeda has not attacked Sweden, for example, because Sweden has not attacked the Middle East. “If the US leaves Muslims alone, they will leave it alone.” Criticizes Bush's Inaction on 9/11 - Bin Laden is critical of President Bush and his inaction on 9/11, saying: “It did not occur to us that the commander in chief of the American armed forces would leave fifty thousand of his citizens in the two towers to face this great horror on their own, just when they needed him most. It seems that a little girl’s story about a goat and its butting was more important than dealing with airplanes and their butting into skyscrapers.” He comments that the Bush administration favors certain corporations and has mismanaged public funds: “To some analysts and diplomats, it seems as if we and the White House are on the same team shooting at the United States’ own goal, despite our different intentions.” He concludes: “I say unto you in truth that your security lies not in the hands of Kerry, Bush, or al-Qaeda. It lies in your own hands, and whichever state does not encroach on our security thereby ensures its own. Allah is our master; you have none. Peace be upon those who follow true guidance.” [Laden, 2005, pp. 237-244]Speech Will Benefit Bush - Despite the criticism of Bush in the speech, most commentators think it will actually help Bush get reelected. For example, Time magazine correspondent Karen Tumulty says: “I find it hard to find any way that this helps John Kerry. What we’ve seen over and over and over again is that when terrorism is the topic, and when people are reminded of 9/11, Bush’s numbers go up.” [CNN, 10/29/2004] The CIA also concludes this is what bin Laden intended (see October 29, 2004). And on this evening, an aide brings up the new bin Laden video tape to Bush’s senior adviser Karl Rove, who is with the president in Ohio, campaigning for the election. “This has the feel of something,” Rove says slowly, “that’s not gonna hurt us at all.” [Draper, 2007, pp. 263]

President Bush signs the 2004 Defense Authorization Act which contains a provision giving the Pentagon authority for US special operations to give cash, equipment, and weapons to foreign fighters and groups who are willing to ally themselves with the US on certain military operations. Under the new piece of legislation, US Special Operations Command will have as much as $25 million a year to spend on supporting “foreign forces, irregular forces, groups or individuals.” Commenting on Congress’ generous appropriation, retired Army Gen. Wayne Downing tells the Associated Press, “For the kind of stuff they want to do—buy AK-47s, pick-up trucks, stuff like that—this is a lot of money. If they can slip someone $100,000 to buy information or buy support (from foreign individuals or groups), then that would be very useful.” Until now, these types of operations were restricted to the CIA—but only when authorized by a presidential directive. This new provision imposes no such restrictions on the Pentagon’s special operations. Some observers have expressed concern that this will lead to problems. They fear that special operations will end up funding and arming unsavory foreign elements that later turn against the US, as has happened on countless occasions during the last half-century. Others say the measure is part of Rumsfeld’s strategy to make the defense department more autonomous so its activities will not be subject to the oversight of other agencies. [Associated Press, 10/30/2005]

Roughly around 2004, the CIA suspects that Osama bin Laden has moved from the mountains of Pakistan or Afghanistan to an urban area in Pakistan. Marty Martin leads the CIA’s hunt for bin Laden from 2002 to 2004. After bin Laden’s death in 2011, he will say: “We could see from his videos what his circumstances were. In the immediate years [after bin Laden’s escape from Tora Bora in late 2001] he looked battle fatigued and on the run. He didn’t look healthy. We knew he was moving. But where? We simply didn’t know. Then, he gained weight and looked healthy. I told my analysts, ‘He’s gone urban, moved somewhere stable and safe.’” [ABC News, 5/19/2011] The only publicly known video of bin Laden after December 2001 is one released in October 2004, so Martin presumably is referring to that (see December 26, 2001 and October 29, 2004).

Senator John McCain (R-AZ) says, “[Osama] bin Laden may have just given us a little boost. Amazing, huh?” He is referring to the videotape of bin Laden giving a speech that was released just four days before the 2004 US presidential elections (see October 29, 2004), and two days prior to his comment. McCain clarifies, “[The video] is helpful to President Bush because it puts the focus on the war on terrorism.” The CIA and other intelligence agency analysts also agree that the video helps Bush win reelection, and that that was bin Laden’s intention (see October 29, 2004). [The Hour, 10/31/2004]

Mustafa Abu al-Yazid. [Source: Al Jazeera]A US patrol allegedly nearly accidentally stumbles upon bin Laden. High-ranking
al-Qaeda leader Mustafa Abu al-Yazid will tell the following story to Omar Farooqi, a Taliban officer who later tells it to a Newsweek reporter. Bin Laden and his entourage is holed up somewhere in the mountains along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. A sentry spots of a patrol of US soldiers who seem headed straight for the hideout. The sentry radios an alert to bin Laden’s 40 or so bodyguards to remove him to a fallback position and supposedly there is even talk of killing bin Laden to prevent him from being taken alive. But the sentry watches the patrol move in a different direction without realizing how close they accidentally came to bin Laden. A former US intelligence officer later tells Newsweek that he is aware of official reporting on this incident. [Newsweek, 8/28/2007]

Mary Galligan. [Source: FBI]Mary Galligan, the head of the FBI’s 9/11 investigation, says that the 9/11 attacks were virtually unstoppable. Galligan was the head of the FBI’s domestic terror squad in the summer of 2001, and then headed PENTTBOM, the FBI’s 9/11 investigation from just after the 9/11 attacks until early 2004 (see June 14, 2004). [Federal Bureau of Investigation, 7/1/2010] She says: “If I had [9/11 hijacker Mohamed] Atta—say, we got a call from a next-door neighbor, and we sent a guy out there—he’s not gonna give us the plan, so the agent is gonna come back to me and say, ‘Mary, he’s nothing.’ And what could I do? Nothing. Or let’s assume we learned the hijackers’ names in 2000. We would have surveilled them and listened to their conversations. But we know now they didn’t even know the plan at that time. If we approached them, they would have left the country. Would bin Laden then have sent more people? Yes.” [Vanity Fair, 11/2004] Galligan’s comment that the hijackers didn’t know the plan for 9/11 is contradicted by much evidence. For instance, in March 2001, most of them recorded videos in which they pledged to die martyrs in the US, and some of these videos were made public in 2002 and 2003 (see (December 2000-March 2001)).

A Pentagon memo states that agents recruited as part of the Pentagon’s covert operations program, the Strategic Support Branch (see October 2001-April 2002), “may include ‘notorious figures’ whose links to the US government would be embarrassing if disclosed.” [Washington Post, 1/23/2005]

Bobby Charles. [Source: State Department]Assistant Secretary of State Bobby Charles, who runs the State Department’s Bureau for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs (INL), has been growing increasingly concerned about the worsening drug crisis in Afghanistan. He starts warning his superiors that unless the problem is dealt with, it could “devour” the Afghan government. Charles pushes for a multi-faceted counter-narcotics program. One controversial aspect of his program would involve aggressive aerial spraying of Afghan poppy fields using a diluted solution of the pesticide known commercially as Roundup. To minimize Afghan opposition to the spraying, the program would be combined with an informational campaign asserting that the pesticide is safe and an aid package for alternative agricultural development. Further, the US military would begin counter-narcotics missions such as destroying drug labs. Secretary of State Colin Powell presents Charles’ program to President Bush and other top officials shortly after Bush’s reelection. Bush completely agrees with the program, even saying that he is determined not to “waste another American life on a narco-state.” However, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld is firmly opposed to the program and, as author James Risen notes, “Time and again in the Bush administration, Rumsfeld simply ignored decisions made by the president in front of his war cabinet, according to several senior administration officials.” One month later, with Powell losing power as he leaves the Bush administration, Rumsfeld decreases support for the program, effectively killing it. Charles is told that he is now “highly inconvenient” and is pushed out of his job by the new Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in early 2005. [Risen, 2006, pp. 152-162]

Michael Rolince, head of counterintelligence at the FBI’s Washington office, says of the 9/11 hijackers, “These guys were pros. For us to have done anything, these guys had to make a mistake. And they didn’t. Could we have generated enough information-ever-to keep them off those planes? I doubt it.” [Vanity Fair, 11/2004] In 2002, an FBI agent called this kind of argument “the Superman scenario.” The notion that the hijackers made no mistakes had been discredited well before Rolince’s comments (see April 2002).

A former CIA officer will tell New Yorker reporter Seymour Hersh that, in mid-2004, the White House began putting pressure on CIA analysts “to see more support for the administration’s political position.” But after Porter Goss becomes the new CIA director (see September 24, 2004) and the November 2004 election passes, a “political purge” of employees who have written papers that dissent with Bush policies begins. One former official notes that only “true believers” remain. [New Yorker, 1/24/2005]'Creeping Politicization' - An anonymous former CIA official tells Newsday: “The agency is being purged on instructions from the White House. Goss was given instructions… to get rid of those soft leakers and liberal Democrats.” [Newsday, 11/14/2004] In 2007, CIA analyst Valerie Plame Wilson will write, “Employees’ worst fears about the creeping politicization of the CIA” are confirmed when Goss issues the memo about the agency supporting the administration. She will observe: “Although a CIA spokesman explained the memo as a statement of the agency’s nonpartisan nature, it appeared to be just the opposite. It had a kind of creepy Orwellian Ministry of Truth ring to it—further dismaying CIA staffers who believed the agency was rapidly losing credibility and power as partisan politics began to degrade its work product.” [Wilson, 2007, pp. 212] Days after the November 2004 presidential election, Goss circulates an internal memorandum to all CIA employees, telling them their job is to “support the administration and its policies in our work.” [New York Times, 11/17/2004] The memo also contains a caveat that they should “let the facts alone speak to the policymaker.” However, an op-ed in the Los Angeles Times calls this mere “lip service,” and says the memo leaves “the impression that in the second Bush administration, the White House will run the CIA.… Goss has confirmed the worst fears of critics who warned he was too partisan when Bush appointed him.” [Los Angeles Times, 11/21/2004]Morale 'Dangerously Low,' Many Senior Officials Leave - Plame Wilson will recall hearing from her colleagues throughout August, while she was on leave, “that morale was dangerously low, and there was a spirit of outright revolt towards Porter Goss and his ‘Gosslings.’ Everyone was calculating the benefits of staying or jumping from the fast-sinking ship.” [Wilson, 2007, pp. 213] Such new policies inspire more employees to leave. By the time the purge is completed in early 2005, about 20 senior CIA officials will have resigned or retired. Only one member of the leadership team from George Tenet’s tenure will remain. [Washington Post, 1/6/2005] Newsweek says the “efforts at cleaning house may have only thrown the spy agency into deeper turmoil.” [Newsweek, 2/21/2005] Plame Wilson will write: “At least one thousand years of hard-earned operational experience walked out when our country’s national security needs were greatest. It was devastating.” [Wilson, 2007, pp. 213]

Theo van Gogh. [Source: Column Film]Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh is killed by al-Qaeda linked figures. He is shot while on the streets of Amsterdam, then his throat is slit and a note is pinned to his chest with a knife. Van Gogh had received death threats after the release of his short film Submission, which criticized the mistreatment of Muslim women. A Dutch Moroccan named Mohammed Bouyeri is soon captured after a shootout with police. He is later sentenced to life in prison for van Gogh’s murder. About 13 other mostly North African men are linked to Bouyeri, and most of them are later convicted for various crimes. This group is said to have ties to al-Qaeda cells in Spain and Belgium, and links to bombings in Casablanca and Madrid (see May 16, 2003 and 7:37-7:42 a.m., March 11, 2004). [PBS Frontline, 1/25/2005]

President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney are re-elected to the US presidency for a second term. In the coming months, some important cabinet officials are replaced. Secretary of State Colin Powell resigns. Condoleezza Rice moves from National Security Adviser to Secretary of State. Her Deputy National Security Adviser Steven Hadley becomes the new National Security Adviser. Attorney General John Ashcroft resigns and is replaced by Alberto Gonzalez. Department of Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge resigns and is replaced by Michael Chertoff. [CBS News, 11/30/2004]

Kevin Ryan. [Source: Public domain]Kevin Ryan, the laboratory director at Environmental Health Laboratories Inc., which is a subsidiary of Underwriters Laboratories Inc., writes an e-mail to the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)—the agency currently investigating the WTC collapses—in which he challenges the official theory regarding the WTC collapses. According to Ryan, Underwriters Laboratories Inc. was the company that certified the steel components used in the construction of the World Trade Center, and it had been agreed that the samples it certified met all requirements. His e-mail states, “This story just does not add up. If steel from [the Twin Towers] did soften or melt, I’m sure we can all agree that this was certainly not due to jet fuel fires of any kind, let alone the briefly burning fires in those towers.” His e-mail is published on the Internet, and generates interest on many websites. Days later, Kevin Ryan is fired because, according to a company spokesman, he “expressed his own opinions as though they were institutional opinions and beliefs” of Underwriters Laboratories. According to Underwriters Laboratories, “there is no evidence” that any firm tested the materials used to build the towers. They also say that Ryan was not involved in any way with their fire protection division, which had conducted testing at NIST’s request. [South Bend Tribune, 11/22/2004]

Mohamed Alanssi, an FBI counterterrorism informant (see November 2001), sets himself on fire in front of the White House in protest over how the bureau has handled him. Alanssi had previously informed the Washington Post and Robert Fuller, his FBI handler in New York, of his intention. Fuller is an FBI agent who failed to locate the 9/11 hijackers in the US before 9/11 (see September 4, 2001, September 4-5, 2001 and September 4-5, 2001). Alanssi approaches the White House and asks the Secret Service to deliver a note to President Bush. When he is turned away, he steps back and then sets his jacket on fire, suffering serious burns before the Secret Service agents can extinguish the flames. Alanssi is primarily unhappy that the FBI has confiscated his passport, because he is ill and wants to visit his family in Yemen, where his wife is sick with stomach cancer. The FBI is apparently holding the passport in an attempt to make him testify at the trial of Mohammed Ali Hassan al-Moayad, an associate of Osama bin Laden that Alanssi informed on (see January 2003). Alanssi has also complained to the Post that the FBI has not kept all of its promises, allowing his identity to become known, endangering himself and his family, not giving him US citizenship, and paying him $100,000 after promising him he would “be a millionaire.” Alanssi told the Post: “It is my big mistake that I have cooperated with FBI. The FBI has already destroyed my life and my family’s life and made us in a very danger position.… I am not crazy to destroy my life and my family’s life to get $100,000.” [Washington Post, 11/16/2004]

Newsweek reports that US intelligence sources believe “al-Qaeda operatives [are] plotting a ‘big bomb’ attack against a major landmark in Britain—but [have] no active plans for strikes in the United States…” The article continues: “Some US law enforcement officers based in London… have become extremely concerned about evidence regarding possible active al-Qaeda plots to attack targets in Britain. According to a US government official, fears of terror attacks have prompted FBI agents based in the US Embassy in London to avoid traveling on London’s popular underground railway (or tube) system, which is used daily by millions of commuters. While embassy-based officers of the US Secret Service, Immigration and Customs bureaus, and the CIA still are believed to use the underground to go about their business, FBI agents have been known to turn up late to crosstown meetings because they insist on using taxis in London’s traffic-choked business center.” [Newsweek, 11/17/2004; Salon, 11/18/2004]

Mohammad Sidique Khan (left) and Shehzad Tanweer (right) passing through immigration control in Karachi, Pakistan. [Source: Public domain]Two suicide bombers in the 7/7 London bombings (see July 7, 2005) attend a militant training camp in Pakistan. On November 18, 2004, 7/7 bombers Mohammad Sidique Khan and Shehzad Tanweer fly from Britain to Pakistan. British officials will later accuse the two other 7/7 bombers, Germaine Lindsay and Hasib Hussain, and three of their associates, Waheed Ali, Sadeer Saleem, and Mohammed Shakil, of scouting for bomb targets on December 16 and 17, 2004. The five of them visit the Natural History Museum, the London Eye, and the London Aquarium. Ali, Saleem, and Shakil will later be charged with assisting the 7/7 bombers, but they will claim they were merely on a sightseeing trip. In any case, nine days later, on December 26, Ali and Saleem fly to Pakistan. Ali will later admit in court that they meet Khan and Tanweer at a training camp. Tanweer apparently spends much of the time at a training camp near Kashmir (see December 2004-January 2005), and Khan mostly trains elsewhere with an al-Qaeda linked explosives expert (see July 23, 2005). Khan and Tanweer leave Pakistan on February 8, 2005, while Ali and Saleem stay until late February. [Guardian, 7/19/2005; Guardian, 4/14/2008; Guardian, 5/21/2008] Khan and Tanweer attended training camps in Pakistan in the summer of 2003 (see July-September 2003), and Khan also went in July 2001 (see July 2001).

Three years after he blamed homosexuals, abortionists, and civil liberties groups for causing 9/11 (see September 13, 2001) and apologized for some of his remarks (see September 14, 2001), televangelist Jerry Falwell misstates his remarks on NBC’s Meet the Press. He now claims that when he made his statement, he “likewise” held responsible “a sleeping church, a lethargic church.” However, the transcript and reports of his remarks show he did not make such a claim. Falwell also attacks progressive religious figure Jim Wallis as “anti-America[n]” because Wallis did not support former president Ronald Reagan’s Cold War policies of “peace through strength.” Had Wallis “been the president in World War II,” Falwell says, “we’d all be speaking German now.” Falwell widens his attack to include gay Republicans; when moderator Tim Russert notes that television writer Marc Cherry is a “conservative gay Republican,” Falwell replies, “Well, the fact that he’s a gay Republican means he should join the Democratic Party.” [MSNBC, 11/28/2004]

Recently retired Spanish Prime Minister Jose María Aznar says to a parliamentary investigation, “There is absolute proof that shows… a connection between ETA terrorists and Islamic terrorism.… I am one of those who believe that all [forms of] terrorism end up being connected.” ETA are a Basque separatist group. According to the Guardian, Aznar’s political party lost a national election three days after the March 2004 Madrid train bombings (see 7:37-7:42 a.m., March 11, 2004) “partly because voters mistrusted his government’s initial insistence that ETA, rather than Islamists, was to blame.” Since then, little evidence has come forward suggesting any ETA link with the bombing, although some of the Arab bomb suspects had contacts with some ETA associates in prison several years before. Aznar denies that his government lied about what it knew regarding who was responsible for the bombings. “My conscience is clear… we told the truth about what we knew.” [Guardian, 11/29/2004] Many Spaniards, especially supporters of Aznar’s conservative Popular Party, continue to assert that there was an ETA link. The Observer comments, “Few experts, however, give credence to the ETA theory. Some see it as an attempt by the [Popular] Party to muddy the waters in a vain bid to save the party’s battered reputation.” [Observer, 11/28/2004]

Surveillance photo of Muktar Ibrahim at a training camp in Britain. [Source: Metropolitan Police]In December 2004, Muktar Ibrahim is stopped at a London airport with two associates as the three of them are attempting to fly to Pakistan. Ibrahim is the head bomber in the failed 21/7 copycat London bombings (see July 21, 2005), and was monitored by British intelligence several times between May and August 2004 taking part in a training camp in Britain run by Islamist militants. He has an extensive criminal record, including convictions for theft, indecent assault on a minor, and attempted robbery. He had been arrested in October 2004 with the man known to be running the training camps, charged with a public order offense, and then released on bail (see May 2-August 2004). He and his two companions at the airport are stopped carrying warm weather combat-style clothing, $2,000 (£990) in cash, and a medical manual in which the treatment for bullet injuries is underlined. Ibrahim’s name is recognized by security personnel and his face is matched with photos from the training camp surveillance. The three men claim to be on the way to a wedding, but they can offer no explanation for the medical manual. Remarkably, Ibrahim is allowed to take his flight to Pakistan with his two associates, even though he is due to appear in court soon to be tried for his October arrest. In Pakistan, he will attend a training camp run by al-Qaeda linked militants (see December 2004-January 2005) and then he will come back to Britain and try to blow up a subway car full of passengers in late July 2005. There appears to be no further monitoring of him after he comes back from Pakistan. Shadow Home Secretary David Davis will later complain: “[T]he ringleader of the 21/7 plot was allowed to leave the country to train at a camp in Pakistan and return to plan and attempt the attack on 21/7. This was despite the fact that he was facing criminal charges for extremism.” [Independent, 7/10/2007; Independent, 7/10/2007]

Intelligence Brief, a newsletter published by former CIA officers Vince Cannistraro and Philip Giraldi, reports that the White House has given the Pentagon permission “to operate unilaterally in a number of countries where there is a perception of a clear and evident terrorist threat,” including Algeria, Sudan, Yemen, Syria, Malaysia, and Tunisia. [New Yorker, 1/24/2005] The operations’ chain of command will include Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and two of his deputies, Stephen Cambone, the undersecretary of defense for intelligence, and Army Lieutenant General William G. (Jerry) Boykin. Under these new arrangements, “US military operatives would be permitted to pose abroad as corrupt foreign businessmen seeking to buy contraband items that could be used in nuclear-weapons systems,” New Yorker magazine reports. “In some cases, according to the Pentagon advisers, local citizens could be recruited and asked to join up with guerrillas or terrorists. This could potentially involve organizing and carrying out combat operations, or even terrorist activities.” Describing how the operations would be conducted, Seymour Hersh of the New Yorker reports: “The new rules will enable the Special Forces community to set up what it calls ‘action teams’ in the target countries overseas which can be used to find and eliminate terrorist organizations. ‘Do you remember the right-wing execution squads in El Salvador?‘… [a] former high-level intelligence official asked me… ‘We founded them and we financed them,’ he said. ‘The objective now is to recruit locals in any area we want. And we aren’t going to tell Congress about it.’ A former military officer, who has knowledge of the Pentagon’s commando capabilities, said, ‘We’re going to be riding with the bad boys.’” [New Yorker, 1/24/2005]

Richard Falkenrath, a former assistant professor at Harvard and White House staffer in the Bush administration, writes a blistering critique of the 9/11 Commission report for the scholarly journal International Security, published by Harvard and MIT. Falkenrath attacks the commission for failing to publicly name the White House officials who performed poorly—apparently counterterrorism “tsar” Richard Clarke and National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice—as this is “exactly the wrong message to send to future government officials and the people who train them.” Falkenrath charges that the commission endorsed a “no fault” theory of government, where individuals are not held responsible for their actions, no matter how catastrophic they are. Instead of this, the commission report offered an “imprecise, anodyne, and impersonal assignment of responsibility for the US government’s failure to prevent the 9/11 attacks.” However, Falkenrath argues that “government is not a ‘no fault’ business,” and that “when the government fails to act in situations in which it has a legal authority to do so, it is almost always because specific and identifiable officials made a decision, formally or informally, not to act.” [Shenon, 2008, pp. 391-393]

Retired Maj. Gen. Bruce Lawlor, formerly part of the Homeland Security Advisory Council, a panel made up of business representatives, academic leaders, and security experts appointed by President Bush, says that the Homeland Security warning system had outlived its usefulness. “I’m not suggesting that we do away with communications with the public. What I’m suggesting is that maybe you do away with the color-coded system.” [North County Times, 12/15/2004] The Department of Homeland Security has also been accused on a number of occasions for manipulating the alert level for political reasons. [Rolling Stone, 9/21/2006 ] Secretary of Homeland Security Tom Ridge acknowledges criticisms of the system, saying that the color-coded system has invited “questions and even occasional derision.” However, he also states that “the system is here to stay.” [Associated Press, 12/15/2004] He agrees with a report released by the Heritage Foundation and the Center for Strategic and International Studies that recommends reform of the system. The report specifically suggests the removal of the color-coded system in favor of a system of regional alerts. The Homeland Security Advisory Council votes to collect information from the public and the media about the threat system. Other recommendations they adopt include plans to identify potential private-sector terror targets, suggestions on how to improve terrorism-related fields of study and how to bolster terror-related training. [North County Times, 12/15/2004]

Muktar Ibrahim. [Source: Metropolitan Police]Shehzad Tanweer, one of the suicide bombers in the 7/7 London bombings (see July 7, 2005), attends the same training camp in Pakistan at the same time as Muktar Ibrahim, the head bomber in the 21/7 bombings, a failed attempt to duplicate the 7/7 bombings two weeks later (see July 21, 2005). They both attend a camp in Manserah, in a remote area near the border of the disputed region of Kashmir, between December 2004 and January 2005. The camp is run by the Pakistani militant group Harkat ul-Mujahedeen. While there is no definitive proof the two men meet face to face, the strong likelihood of them interacting at the training camp suggests a link between the 7/7 and 21/7 bombers. [Independent, 7/10/2007] 7/7 bomber Mohammad Sidique Khan spends time in Pakistan with Tanweer during these months (see November 18, 2004-February 8, 2005), and he trains with an al-Qaeda operative linked to a Harkat ul-Mujahedeen splinter group. An associate named Waheed Ali will later testify he meets Khan and Tanweer at a Pakistan training camp around this time, but it is not specified if it is the Manserah camp or a different one (see July 23, 2005). [Guardian, 5/21/2008]

A treasure hunter suspected of being a CIA operative is discovered living in the US. In May 2002, US citizen Michael Meiring accidentally blew himself up in a Philippines hotel room, and ended up losing both of his legs. He was mysteriously whisked back to the US amidst media reports suggesting he was a CIA operative posing as a Muslim militant bomber (see May 16, 2002). On June 19, 2002, the chief of the Philippines’ National Bureau of Investigation vowed that Meiring would be brought back to the Philippines to face charges since he appeared to have returned to the US, and the Philippines and the US have an existing extradition treaty. [Minda News, 6/1/2003] On December 2, 2004, a Houston TV station will discover that Meiring is living in Houston, Texas. They examined court documents about him and learned that earlier in 2004 he changed his last name to Van De Meer. The Philippine government confirms that they issued an arrest warrant for Meiring and are still looking for him and an associate of his named Stephen Hughes, who is now said to be living in North Carolina. Counterterrorism expert Ron Hatchett asks, “How is he able to walk around freely within our society using the name that is on the arrest warrant for him?” Meiring is reached by phone in California. His only on the record comment to the reporter who discovered him is, “If this harms me in any way, you will find my power then, and you’ll find out who I am. But I will come for you. You harm me I will not let you off the hook.” [KHOU-TV, 12/2/2004; Filipino Reporter, 12/30/2004] In early 2005, it will be reported that Meiring may not get extradited back to the Philippines because the Philippine government cannot produce a picture of him. [Mindanao Times, 3/23/2005] However, previous media reports claimed that a picture ID of Meiring was found in his hotel room after the explosion there. The ID lists him as an officer in the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF), a Muslim rebel militant group. [KHOU-TV, 12/2/2004] He appears to have ties to leaders of that group and other Philippine Muslim militant groups since 1992 (see 1992-1993). Since 2004, there have been no reports of Meiring being successfully extradited.

Security forces at the gate where attackers entered the US Consulate compound. [Source: Associated Press]Armed militants attack the US Consulate in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. Five workers at the consulate, none of them US citizens, are killed, and another thirteen are wounded. Four of the attackers die in a shootout as well after taking hostages. A group called Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula claims responsibility for the attack in an Internet posting [Washington Post, 12/7/2004; CNN, 12/7/2004]

President Bush awards Tenet the Medal of Freedom. [Source: Associated Press]President Bush gives the Presidential Medal of Freedom to former CIA Director George Tenet, former Iraq war leader General Tommy Franks, and former Iraq functionary Paul Bremer. The Medal of Freedom is the highest honor the president can bestow. Bush comments, “This honor goes to three men who have played pivotal roles in great events and whose efforts have made our country more secure and advanced the cause of human liberty.” [Associated Press, 12/14/2001; Washington Post, 12/14/2004] However, the awards will come in for some criticism, as Tenet, CIA director on 9/11, wrongly believed Iraq had weapons of mass destruction
(see December 21, 2002), Bremer disbanded the Iraqi army (see May 23, 2003), and Franks, responsible for the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, failed to assign enough troops to the hunt for Osama bin Laden, thereby enabling him to escape (see Late October-Early December 2001). [Washington Post, 12/14/2001] John McLaughlin, Tenet’s deputy director, will later say that Tenet “wishes he could give that damn medal back.” [New York Times, 10/2/2006] White House press secretary Scott McClellan will later write that this “well-intentioned gesture designed to create positive impressions of the war seemed to backfire.” Instead of holding these three accountable for their role in the deepening Iraq crisis, Bush hails them as heroes. McClellan will observe: “Wasn’t this supposed to be an administration that prided itself on results and believed in responsibility and accountability? If so, why the rush to hand out medals to people who had helped organize what was now looking like a badly botched, ill-conceived war?” [McClellan, 2008, pp. 250-251] David Wade, a spokesman for Senator John Kerry (D-MA), says, “My hunch is that George Bush wasn’t using the same standard when honoring Tenet and Bremer that was applied to previous honorees.” Previous recipients include human rights advocate Mother Teresa, civil rights icon Rosa Parks, and Pope John Paul II. Senator Carl Levin (D-MI) says he “would have reached a different conclusion” on Tenet. “I don’t think [he] served the president or the nation well.” [Associated Press, 12/14/2001] Reporter Steve Coll will later comment: “I presume that for President Bush, it was a signal that he wasn’t making Tenet a scapegoat. It would be the natural thing to do, right? You’ve seen this episode of ‘I, Claudius.’ You know, you put the knife in one side and the medal on the other side, and that’s politics.” And author James Bamford will say: “Tenet [retired], and kept his mouth shut about all the things that went on, about what kind of influence [Vice President Dick] Cheney might have had. They still have a CIA, but all the power is now with his team over at the Pentagon. They’re gathering more power every day in terms of intelligence. So largely, Cheney won.” [PBS Frontline, 6/20/2006] Author and media critic Frank Rich will later write: “The three medals were given to the men who had lost Osama bin Laden (General Tommy Franks), botched the Iraq occupation (Paul Bremer), and called prewar intelligence on Saddam’s WMDs a ‘slam dunk’ (George Tenet). That the bestowing of an exalted reward for high achievement on such incompetents incited little laughter was a measure of how much the administration, buoyed by reelection, still maintained control of its embattled but not yet dismantled triumphalist wartime narrative.” [Rich, 2006, pp. 158]

The Daily Telegraph reports that “the search for [bin Laden] the world’s most wanted man has all but come to a halt because of Pakistan’s refusal to permit cross-border raids from Afghanistan, according to CIA officials.” Even spy missions by unmanned Predator drones need Pakistani military approval involving a lengthy chain of command that frequently causes delays. Most accounts have bin Laden still alive and living in the near-lawless Pakistan and Afghanistan border region. US officials believe bin Laden and his deputies are being hidden by sympathetic local tribesmen, who are continuing to fund his operations from opium sales. [Daily Telegraph, 12/14/2004]

An extremist arrested and interrogated in Saudi Arabia appears to disclose details of an operation that is strikingly similar to the 7/7 London bombings that will occur in mid-2005 (see July 7, 2005). However, the intelligence does not yield any results before the attacks, even though it is shared with the US and Britain. It will later be unclear whether the arrested man, known as Adel, provided a truthful account or was a fabricator who just happened to predict some details of the plot. Adel is arrested in Buraydah, Saudi Arabia, in late 2004 for using a fraudulent passport, and a memo on his interrogation dated December 14 of that year, which is sent to the CIA and British intelligence, seems to reveal details of a multifaceted operation. Some details match those of the actual attack: it is to be carried out by four people in London in the middle of 2005, some of them British citizens, and will include a location around “Edgewood Road” (one of the bombs will explode at Edgeware Road tube station). The target is said to be a subway station or a nightclub. However, Adel, who is said to know Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, also says the explosives will come from Bosnia and the plot will be coordinated by a Libyan businessman in London, who will help with safe houses and transport. In addition, one of the bombers is said to have tattoos on his fingers. The Saudis send Britain and the US a second report in February 2005, providing more details about the alleged bombers, who are supposed to be from different countries, although there are also apparently Caucasian British and Germans involved. The CIA checks a Syrian phone number mentioned in one of the memos, but finds nothing. [Woodward, 2006, pp. 400-2; Observer, 2/5/2006] After the bombings, Saudi ambassador to London Prince Turki will say in a statement, “There was certainly close liaison between the Saudi Arabian intelligence authorities and the British intelligence authorities some months ago, when information was passed to Britain about a heightened terrorist threat to London,” although it is unclear whether this statement refers to this warning, another Saudi warning about a possible attack in Britain (see April 2005 or Shortly Before), or both. [New Statesman, 11/1/2007] Interest in the detainee will be revived after the attack and even President Bush will become involved, but veteran reporter Bob Woodward, who examines the story in a 2006 book, will conclude that Adel is a fabricator. [Woodward, 2006, pp. 400-2] However, a Saudi security adviser will later say that he is “convinced” the information passed on was “directly linked” to the 7/7 bombings. [Observer, 2/5/2006]

A new address by Osama bin Laden attacks the rulers of Saudi Arabia in even more strident terms than before. Professor Bruce Lawrence calls this speech “a blistering indictment of the House of Saud and the calamity it has historically represented for the [Arabian] peninsula.” Bin Laden says that the ruling Saudi family “has neglected the necessary conditions to maintain security, life, social harmony, and cohesion… Millions of people suffer every day from poverty and deprivation, while millions of riyals [the Saudi currency] flow into the bank accounts of the royals who wield executive power.” He also says the Al Saud family is “beyond the pale of Islam,” and defines the fight as “partly an internal regional struggle between global unbelief, with the apostates today under the leadership of America on one side, and the Islamic umma [community] and its brigades of mujaheddin, on the other.” He also complains of American influence over Saudi Arabia, and the depression in US interests of the price of oil, which apparently should be ”$100 [a barrel] at the very least.” In addition, he attacks other regional rulers, such as those in Jordan, Egypt, Yemen, Iraq, and Libya, and urges their violent overthrow. [Laden, 2005, pp. 245-275]

Saad al-Fagih. [Source: PBS]The US and UN designate Saad al-Fagih a global terrorist, but Britain, where he lives, takes no effective action against him. Al-Fagih helped supply bin Laden with a satellite telephone used in the 1998 embassy bombings (see November 1996-Late August 1998). Britain seizes the assets of al-Fagih and his organization, the Movement for Islamic Reform in Arabia. [US Department of the Treasury, 12/21/2004; BBC, 12/24/2004] However, Saudi ambassador to Britain Prince Turki al-Faisal will later complain that the total seized is only ”£20 or something” (note: equivalent of about $39) and that the British government allows al-Fagih to continue to operate openly from London, despite being a specially designated global terrorist (see August 10, 2005). [London Times, 8/10/2005] Britain has long been suspected of harboring Islamic militants in return for them promising not to attack Britain (see August 22, 1998).

Five agencies, under an agreement worked out by US District Judge Alvin Hellerstein, release approximately 9,000 pages of internal reports, investigations, and e-mails containing information about prisoner abuse in Guantanamo, Iraq, and Afghanistan. The massive disclosure seemingly marks the end of a more than 13-month long effort (see October 7, 2003 and September 15, 2004) by five human rights groups to access the documents under the Freedom of Information Act. The documents demonstrate that the abuses were far more widespread and systemic than previously acknowledged by the government. The documents include information about numerous abuses, such as threatened and mocked executions, thefts of private property, physical assaults, shocking detainees with electric guns, the use of dogs to intimidate prisoners at Guantanamo, shackling detainees without food and water, and murder. In many of the cases, the Army chose to punish offenders with non-criminal punishments rather than court-martial them. Reporting on the disclosure, the Washington Post notes, “The variety of the abuse and the fact that it occurred over a three-year period undermine the Pentagon’s past insistence… that the abuse occurred largely during a few months at [Abu Ghraib], and that it mostly involved detainee humiliation or intimidation rather than the deliberate infliction of pain.” [Washington Post, 12/22/2004] However, these agencies continue to secret hold back some material and in late 2005 the CIA will destroy videotapes of interrogations relevant to these requests (see November 2005).

The US Treasury Department and UN designate Adel Batterjee a global terrorist. Batterjee is connected to the Benevolence International Foundation (BIF). The Treasury Department says that Batterjee “has ranked as one of the world’s foremost terrorist financiers” by helping to fund al-Qaeda. It is not explained why the US waited until this time to list him, but counterterrorism expert Rita Katz suggests that the Saudi government may have changed their stance due to increased al-Qaeda activity in Saudi Arabia. “I think they needed Saudi support, and now it seems to be in place.” However, there is no report of Batterjee being arrested or having his funds frozen in Saudi Arabia. [US Department of the Treasury, 12/21/2004; Chicago Tribune, 12/22/2004]

In a speech given on this day, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld describes terrorists as “the people who attacked the United States in New York, shot down the plane over Pennsylvania and attacked the Pentagon…” His comment that Flight 93 was “shot down” draws attention. A few days later, CNN reports, “A Pentagon spokesman insisted that Rumsfeld simply misspoke, but Internet conspiracy theorists seized on the reference to the plane having been shot down.” [CNN, 12/24/2004; CNN, 12/27/2004]

The Justice Department issues a 17-page memo which officially replaces the August 2002 memo (see August 1, 2002), which asserted that the president’s wartime powers supersede international anti-torture treaties and defined torture very narrowly, describing it as a tactic that produces pain “equivalent in intensity to the pain accompanying serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death.” The new memo, authored by acting chief of the Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) and Acting Assistant Attorney General Daniel Levin, is ostensibly meant to deflect criticisms that the Bush administration condones torture. In fact, the very first sentence reads, “Torture is abhorrent both to American law and values and to international norms.” But the White House insists that the new memo does not represent a change in policy because the administration has always respected international laws prohibiting the mistreatment of prisoners. The primary concern of the new memo is to broaden the narrow definition of torture that had been used in the August memo. Levin adopts the definition of torture used in Congressional anti-torture laws, which says that torture is the infliction of physical suffering, “even if it does not involve severe physical pain.” But the pain must still be more than “mild and transitory,” the memo says. Like the original memo, Levin says that torture may include mental suffering. But to be considered so it would not have to last for months or years, as OLC lawyers Jay Bybee and John Yoo had asserted two years earlier. The most contested conclusions of the August 2002 memo—concerning the president’s wartime powers and potential legal defense for US personnel charged with war crimes—are not addressed in the Levin memo. “Consideration of the bounds of any such authority would be inconsistent with the president’s unequivocal directive that United States personnel not engage in torture,” the memo says. [US Department of Justice, 12/30/2004 ; Associated Press, 12/31/2004]National Security Not a Justification for Torture - The memo also attempts to quell concerns that the administration believes national security may be used as justification for tactics that could be considered as torture. It states, “[A] defendant’s motive (to protect national security, for example) is not relevant to the question whether he has acted with the requisite specific intent under the statute.” [US Department of Justice, 12/30/2004 ]Memo Divided White House Officials - Many in the White House opposed the issuance of the memo, but were rebuffed when other administration officials said the memo was necessary to ease the confirmation of Alberto Gonzales as Attorney General. [New York Times, 10/4/2007]Torture Opponents Disappointed - Civil libertarians and opponents of torture within the Justice Department are sharply disappointed in the memo. While it gives a marginally less restrictive definition of the pain required to qualify as torture, and gives no legal defenses to anyone who might be charged with war crimes, it takes no position on the president’s authority to override interrogation laws and treaties, and finds that all the practices previously employed by the CIA and military interrogators were and are legal. Yoo will later write that “the differences in the opinions were for appearances’ sake. In the real world of interrogation policy, nothing had changed. The new opinion just reread the statute to deliberately blur the interpretation of torture as a short-term political maneuver in response to public criticism.” [Savage, 2007, pp. 196-197]Secret Memo Will Allow Waterboarding; Dissidents Purged - A secret memo is completed a short time later that allows such torture techniques as waterboarding to be used again (see February 2005). The Levin memo triggers a department-wide “purge” of dissidents and torture opponents; some will resign voluntarily, while others will resign after being denied expected promotions. [Savage, 2007, pp. 197]

Classified US documents later found by reporters (see April 10, 2006) but dating from this time suggest that the Taliban is planning to attack US troops from bases inside Pakistan with the acquiescence or even support of elements within the Pakistani government. For instance, an August 2004 presentation accuses Pakistan of making “false and inaccurate reports of border incidents.” A document from early 2005 mentions that the US military is attempting to stop the flow of weapons to the Taliban from Pakistan and stop infiltration routes from Pakistan. Another document includes a US military commander commenting, “Pakistani border forces [should] cease assisting cross border insurgent activities.” [Los Angeles Times, 4/10/2006] Later in 2005, a report by Congress’ research arm will echo these concerns, stating, “Among the most serious sources of concern is the well-documented past involvement of some members of the Army’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) organization with al-Qaeda and the Taliban, and the possibility that some officers retain sympathies with both groups.” [Los Angeles Times, 4/14/2006]

The Wall Street Journal reports that a government investigation into activities at Riggs Bank may be hampered because of its “longstanding relationship with the Central Intelligence Agency” (see July 2003). [Wall Street Journal, 12/31/2004] Yet this story attracts almost no mention or follow up in the US media. For instance, the Washington Post, which covers Riggs Bank more than other newspapers because the bank is based in Washington, mentions the CIA connection only in one paragraph near the end of article in the newspaper’s business section two months after the Wall Street Journal article: “Another potential cloud for any acquirer is the bank’s long-standing relationship with the CIA. Sources familiar with the bank’s operations and sources in the intelligence community say that since the 1960s Riggs at least held funds related to CIA operations or agents, and several officers of Riggs had high-level security clearances. However, law enforcement authorities say Riggs’s CIA connections had nothing to do with the bank’s violations of anti-money-laundering laws. And the subject did not arise in the bank’s negotiations with the US attorney for the District over Riggs’s guilty plea, the sources said.” [Washington Post, 2/9/2005] Only Slate appears interested, publishing two stories highlighting the Riggs-CIA connection. In one, it is noted that the connection “invites speculation that the Justice Department might abort the prosecutions lest courtroom brawls reveal more about Riggs and the CIA than the government wants made public.” [Slate, 1/10/2005] The other Slate article will lament, “Where is the rest of the press on the Riggs-CIA connection? Spooks, sheiks, dictators, millions in laundered money, and a $766 million merger in the balance! What does it take to entice an assignment editor these days, a tsunami or something?” [Slate, 1/7/2005]

In 2005, the CIA gives President Bush a secret slide show updating him on the hunt for bin Laden. Bush is taken aback by the small number of CIA case officers posted to Afghanistan and Pakistan. A former intelligence officer will later tell Newsweek that Bush asks, “Is that all there are?” In fact, the CIA had recently doubled the number of officers in the area, but many are inexperienced and raw recruits. Most veteran officers are involved in the Iraq war instead. [Newsweek, 8/28/2007] However, rather than increase the staff working on bin Laden in response to Bush’s complaint, later in the year the CIA will close Alec Station, the unit hunting bin Laden (see Late 2005).

Afghan intelligence allegedly concludes that Osama bin Laden is in Pakistan, but not in the tribal region. Shortly after bin Laden’s death (see May 2, 2011), Amrullah Saleh, who from 2004 to 2010 was head of the NDS (National Directorate of Security), Afghanistan’s intelligence agency, will claim that as early as 2004, and certainly by 2005, the NDS secretly concluded that Osama bin Laden was living somewhere in the heart of Pakistan instead of in the tribal region near the Afghan border where most people thought he was. Saleh claims this conclusion was based on “thousands of interrogation reports” and the assumption that bin Laden with his many wives would not stay in the mountainous wilderness for long. “I was pretty sure he was in the settled areas of Pakistan because in 2005 it was still very easy to infiltrate the tribal areas, and we had massive numbers of informants there. They could find any Arab but not bin Laden.” Saleh has not said if this conclusion was shared with the US and/or Pakistani governments at the time. [Guardian, 5/5/2011]

The second Chechen war has been ongoing since late September 1999 (see September 29, 1999). But around 2005, the intensity of the fighting lessens as Russia tightens its control over Chechnya. Tony Wood, a journalist who has written extensively about Chechnya, later estimates that in 2005 there are about 60,000 Russian soldiers in Chechnya, but this drops down to 8,000 in 2007. By 2008, independent analysts will say there are no more than 2,000 separatists still fighting. An average of two or three Russian soldiers are killed every week. One important reason for the decline in violence is that many rebel leaders have been killed. Most notably, Shamil Basayev, long-time leader of the Islamist faction of fighters, is killed in 2006 (see July 10, 2006). [Reuters, 8/4/2008] In 2004, Basayev reportedly led a number of attacks, culminating in September in the seizing of a public school in Beslan, a town in the neighboring region of North Ossetia. The Russian government soon attacked those holding the school, and over 300 people were killed, most of them children. The New York Times will later report, [T]he school siege became a turning point on many levels. Public sympathy for Chechen separatism, never broad in Russia and limited in the West, began to dry up.” [New York Times, 7/11/2006]

Blackwater stops work on a CIA program to assassinate and capture al-Qaeda leaders. Blackwater had been hired by the agency to work on the program at some time in 2004 (see 2004). However, according to the New York Times, its involvement ends “years before” Leon Panetta becomes CIA director in 2009 (see June 23, 2009). The reason for the termination is that CIA officials begin to question the wisdom of using outsiders in a targeted killing program. [New York Times, 8/20/2009]

The US search for Osama bin Laden slows down for several years. According to an unnamed former Bush White House official speaking in 2011, “a little fatigue had set in” after a few years of mostly false leads. “We weren’t about to find him anytime soon. Publicly, we maintained a sense of urgency: ‘We’re looking as hard as we can.’ But the energy had gone out of the hunt. It had settled to no more than a second-tier issue. After all, those were the worst days of Iraq.” White House and CIA officials will later say that the war in Iraq and problems with Iran and North Korea took much attention from the search for bin Laden. Juan Zarate, President Bush’s deputy national security adviser for counterterrorism at this time, later says that few new leads emerge. “It was a very dark period.” [Washington Post, 5/6/2011] In December 2004, the Telegraph reported that the US search for bin Laden had essentially been abandoned (see December 14, 2004), and in late 2005, the CIA’s bin Laden unit is shut down (see Late 2005). There is a new push to get bin Laden, also in late 2005, but it has little effect (see Late 2005).

Abdul Malik Rigi. [Source: ABC News]According to US and Pakistani intelligence sources interviewed by ABC News, US officials begin encouraging and advising Jundullah, a Pakistani militant group that has been staging attacks against Iran. The group is made up of members of the Baluchi tribe and operates out of the Baluchistan province in Pakistan, just across the border from Iran. [ABC News, 4/3/2007] Iran says the group is linked to al-Qaeda. [Reuters, 5/13/2007] Jundullah’s leader, Abdul Malik Rigi, formerly fought with the Taliban. Alexis Debat, a senior fellow on counterterrorism at the Nixon Center, tells ABC that Rigi “used to fight with the Taliban. He’s part drug smuggler, part Taliban, part Sunni activist.” Rigi commands “a force of several hundred guerrilla fighters that stage attacks across the border into Iran on Iranian military officers, Iranian intelligence officers, kidnapping them, executing them on camera,” Debat explains. According to ABC sources, the US government is not funding the group. [ABC News, 4/3/2007] Rather the group is receiving money and weapons through the Afghan and Pakistani military and Pakistan’s intelligence service, the ISI. [ABC News, 5/23/2007]

Ahmed Wali Karzai. [Source: ABC News]According to classified files stolen from a US army base in Afghanistan and sold in a local market, some senior officials in the Afghan government are also believed to be drug lords. Described as “Tier One Warlords” in a document, they include Gen. Abdul Rashid Dostum, the Chief of Staff of the army, and Gen. Mohammad Daud, the Interior Minister for Counternarcotics (see April 17, 2006). Further, Ahmed Wali Karzai, brother of Afghan President Hamid Karzai, is listed in a classified document as a “problem maker” who “receives money from drug lords as bribe[s] to facilitate their work and movement.” [Independent, 4/13/2006; ABC News, 6/22/2006; Associated Press, 6/23/2006] In early 2006, Newsweek will report that the president’s brother is “alleged to be a major figure by nearly every source who described the Afghan network… including past and present government officials and several minor drug traffickers.” One Interior Ministry official says, “He is the unofficial regional governor of southern Afghanistan and leads the whole trafficking structure.” Newsweek adds that, “Diplomats and well-informed Afghans believe that up to a quarter of the new Parliament’s 249 elected members are linked to narcotics production and trafficking.” [Newsweek, 1/2/2006]

US intelligence learns through communications intercepts about a meeting of al-Qaeda leaders in Bajaur, in the remote border regions of Pakistan near Afghanistan (one account says the meeting is in nearby North Waziristan instead). Intelligence officials have an “80 percent confidence” that al-Qaeda’s second in command Ayman al-Zawahiri and/or other top al-Qaeda leaders are attending the meeting. One intelligence official involved in the operation says, “This was the best intelligence picture we had ever seen” about a high-value target. [New York Times, 7/8/2007; Newsweek, 8/28/2007; New York Times, 6/30/2008]Size of US Force Grows - The original plan calls for cargo planes to carry 30 Navy Seals near the target, then they will use motorized hang gliders to come closer and capture or kill al-Zawahiri. The plan is enthusiastically endorsed by CIA Director Porter Goss and Joint Special Operations Commander Lt. Gen. Stanley McChrystal. But Defense Secretary Rumsfeld and his assistant Stephen Cambone are uncertain. They increase the size of the force to 150 to take care of contingencies. [Newsweek, 8/28/2007] One senior intelligence official involved later says for effect, “The whole thing turned into the invasion of Pakistan.” [New York Times, 7/8/2007]"Frenzied" Debate - But even as US special forces are boarding C-130 cargo planes in Afghanistan, there are “frenzied exchanges between officials at the Pentagon, Central Command, and the CIA about whether the mission was too risky.” Some CIA officials in Washington even try to give orders to execute the raid without informing US Ambassador to Pakistan Ryan Crocker, who apparently is often opposed to such missions. [New York Times, 6/30/2008]Rumsfeld Gives Up Without Asking - Having decided to increase the force, Rumsfeld then decides he couldn’t carry out such a large mission without Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf’s permission. But with the cargo planes circling and the team waiting for a green light, Rumsfeld decides that Musharraf would not approve. He cancels the mission without actually asking Musharraf about it. It is unclear whether President Bush is informed about the mission. The New York Times will later report that “some top intelligence officials and members of the military’s secret Special Operations units” are frustrated at the decision to cancel the operation, saying the US “missed a significant opportunity to try to capture senior members of al-Qaeda.” [New York Times, 7/8/2007] It is not clear why the US does not hit the meeting with a missile fired from a Predator drone instead, as they will do to kill an al-Qaeda leader inside Pakistan a couple of months later (see May 8, 2005).

By early 2005, Secretary of State Colin Powell, Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, and CIA Director George Tenet have all resigned, leaving the Bush administration without any senior officials who have a close relationship with Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf. Previously, these three officials had been pressing Musharraf to take stronger action against the al-Qaeda and Taliban safe haven in Pakistan’s tribal region. With them gone, President Bush is the one who is supposed to raise the issue in regular phone calls to Musharraf. But in June 2008, two former US officials will say that the conversations backfire. Instead of demanding more action from Musharraf, Bush repeatedly thanks him for his contributions to the war on terrorism, actually reducing the pressure on him. One former official who saw transcripts of the conversations says, “He never pounded his fist on the table and said, ‘Pervez, you have to do this.’” The Bush administration will deny it failed to sufficiently pressure Musharraf. [New York Times, 6/30/2008]

A close up of one of the maps showing the location of al-Qaeda camps in Pakistan. AQ stands for al-Qaeda and TB stands for Taliban. [Source: ABC News]Classified files stolen from a US army base in Afghanistan and sold in a local market that date from this time include maps marking the location of al-Qaeda training camps and leaders in Pakistan. One map shows the location of four al-Qaeda training camps in the tribal areas of Pakistan near the Afghan border. This map also shows the location in Pakistan of al-Qaeda’s number two leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri. Other maps and documents indicate 16 al-Qaeda and Taliban leaders in Pakistan. This includes Mullah Omar, the top Taliban leader. But bin Laden is not mentioned. [ABC News, 6/22/2006] One document dated October 2004 indicates two of the Taliban’s main leaders, Mullah Akhter Osmani and Mullah Obaidullah, are in Pakistan, while top leader Mullah Omar and four others are in southern Afghanistan. [Los Angeles Times, 4/10/2006]

Details of an internal CIA report (see June-November 2004) investigating the CIA’s failure to stop the 9/11 attacks are leaked to the New York Times. The report by John Helgerson, the CIA’s inspector general, was completed in June 2004 but remains classified (see June-November 2004). It sharply criticizes former CIA Director George Tenet, as well as former Deputy Director of Operations James Pavitt. It says these two and others failed to meet an acceptable standard of performance, and recommends that an internal review board review their conduct for possible disciplinary action. Cofer Black, head of the CIA’s Counter Terrorism Center at the time of 9/11, is also criticized. However, the New York Times notes that, “It is not clear whether either the agency or the White House has the appetite to reprimand Mr. Tenet, Mr. Pavitt or others.… particularly since President Bush awarded a Medal of Freedom to Mr. Tenet last month.” It is unclear if any reprimands will occur, or even if the final version of the report will point blame at specific individuals. [New York Times, 1/7/2005] In late October 2004, the new CIA Director, Porter Goss, had asked Helgerson to modify the report to avoid drawing conclusions about whether individual CIA officers should be held accountable. [New York Times, 11/2/2004] Helgerson “appears to have accepted [Goss’s] recommendation” and will defer any final judgments to a CIA Accountability Review Board. The final version of the report is said to be completed within weeks. [New York Times, 1/7/2005] However, months pass, and in October 2005, Goss will announce that he is not going to release the report, and also will not convene an accountability board to hold anyone responsible (see October 10, 2005), although an executive summary will be released in 2007 (see August 21, 2007).

A. B. “Buzzy” Krongard, the CIA’s recently departed Executive Director, says in an interview that the world may be better off if bin Laden remains at large. Krongard had been Executive Director, the CIA’s third most senior position, from 1998 until six weeks before this interview. He states, “You can make the argument that we’re better off with him [at large]. Because if something happens to bin Laden, you might find a lot of people vying for his position and demonstrating how macho they are by unleashing a stream of terror.” The London Times notes that, “Several US officials have privately admitted that it may be better to keep bin Laden pinned down on the border of Afghanistan and Pakistan rather than make him a martyr or put him on trial.” However, Krongard is the only senior official to say so publicly, and this position completely contradicts the rhetoric of the Bush administration, which has consistently claimed that catching bin Laden remains a top priority. [London Times, 1/9/2005]

The National Intelligence Council, the center for midterm and long-term strategic thinking within the US intelligence community, issues a report concluding, “Iraq has replaced Afghanistan as the training ground for the next generation of ‘professionalized’ terrorists.” [Washington Post, 1/15/2005] In May, the CIA will report that Iraq may prove to be an even more effective training ground for Islamic extremists than Afghanistan was in al-Qaeda’s early days, because it is serving as a real-world laboratory for urban combat. [New York Times, 6/22/2005]

It is reported that radical London imam Sheikh Omar Bakri Mohammed is urging his followers to join the jihad (holy war). Bakri’s group, Al-Muhajiroun, disbanded in late 2004, and he has been effectively banned from preaching in mosques. However, he still communicates to his followers on a regular basis through the Internet. In recent live web broadcasts, he has condoned suicide attacks, pledged allegiance to Osama bin Laden, and told followers they are in a war with Britain. He has stated that new British anti-terrorist laws have violated the “covenant of security” under which Islamist radicals lived in Britain but only attacked targets overseas (see August 9, 2004). He states, “I believe the whole of Britain has become the Dar ul-Harb [land of war].” He adds that in such a condition, “The kuffar [nonbeliever] has no sanctity for their own life or property.” He stops short of calling for attacks on Britain, but he encourages one supporter to become a suicide bomber. [Evening Standard, 1/17/2005] Labour MP Andrew Dismore responds by saying: “With these words, [Bakri] may well be committing offenses under the Terrorism Act and other legislation. I will be raising this immediately with the home secretary and the Metropolitan Police.” [London Times, 1/17/2005] However, no action is taken against Bakri.

The US ambassador to Turkmenistan states that US companies might join a long-delayed trans-Afghan natural gas pipeline project. The Turkmenistan government says a feasibility study for the $3.5 billion pipeline is complete and construction will begin in 2006. The project’s main sponsor is the Asian Development Bank. The pipeline is to run from Turkmenistan through Herat and Kandahar in Afghanistan, through the Pakistani cities of Quetta and Multan, and on to India. [Associated Press, 1/18/2005] However, in August 2005 it will be reported that security concerns are still causing delays in approval of the project. A NATO representative will say, “People here are able to see what the Iraqi insurgency can do despite the presence of 150,000 foreign troops. Why not do the same in Afghanistan?” [Sydney Morning Herald, 8/25/2005]

Pakistan’s military commander in the tribal regions, Lieutenant General Ali Jan Orakzai, says: “This impression that the Pakistani tribal areas are havens for terrorists is baseless. In my two and a half years of command I never got a single indication that [Osama] bin Laden was on our side of the border. He’s a big guy, hard to hide, and with 74,000 of my troops there it would have been very difficult for him to be hiding.” Orakzai commanded troops there from October 2001 until 2004. He adds that claims that the ISI, Pakistan’s intelligence agency, is tipping off radical militants about Pakistani military movements are baseless. He even says that not a single Arab has been seen in the tribal region. [London Times, 1/22/2005] It is believed that Orakzai intensely hates the US and is sympathetic to the Taliban. Robert Grenier, CIA station chief in Pakistan at this time, will later suggest that Orakzai did not want to find the foreigners, so he conducted large, slow sweeps that allowed militants to easily get away (see Late 2002-Late 2003). Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf will finally fire Orakzai in 2007 for his sympathies to militant groups (see July 19, 2007).

The Washington Post publishes a story revealing the existence of a previously unheard of covert operations unit called the Strategic Support Branch (SSB), or Project Icon. It conducts operations that had previously been done mainly by the CIA, and was set up in the weeks just after 9/11 (see October 2001-April 2002). [Washington Post, 1/23/2005] Members of the Senate Armed Services and Intelligence committees say they have never been aware of the unit’s existence until the Post expose. Sen. Dianne Feinstein calls for Senate Intelligence committee hearings into the matter, but no such hearings take place. The committees are only briefed by the military about the unit one day after the Post story. [CNN, 1/24/2005] One anonymous Republican member of Congress involved in national security oversight complains, “Operations the CIA runs have one set of restrictions and oversight, and the military has another. It sounds like there’s an angle here of, ‘Let’s get around having any oversight by having the military do something that normally the [CIA] does, and not tell anybody.’ That immediately raises all kinds of red flags for me. Why aren’t they telling us?” [Washington Post, 1/23/2005]

Five prisoners are released from Guantanamo, following a Pentagon announcement the release would take place two weeks earlier. They are Mamdouh Habib, an Australian, and the four remaining Britons: Feroz Abbasi, Moazzam Begg, Jamaal Belmar, and Martin Mubanga. British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw says the Britons’ release is the result of his “intensive and complex” discussions with the US. [New York Times, 1/12/2005; New York Times, 1/26/2005] Australian Attorney General Philip Ruddock says the Australian government requested Habib’s repatriation to Australia after the US said it did not intend to bring Habib to trial. [ABC News, 1/11/2005]Two Men's Passports Confiscated - However, upon their return to England, the passports of Mubanga and Abbasi are confiscated by the British authorities using a little-known Royal Prerogative. Home Secretary Charles Clarke writes to the men saying that they are too dangerous to Britain and its allies to be allowed to travel, and that granting them passports “would be contrary to the public interest,” as there are “strong grounds for believing that, on leaving [Britain], you would take part in activities against [Britain] or allied targets. We therefore decided to withdraw your passport facilities for the time being.” [Evening Standard, 2/15/2005]Abbasi's Radical Connections - Abbasi is an associate of radical London imam Abu Hamza al-Masri (see 1999-2000) who had traveled to Afghanistan and been involved in fighting against the US-led invasion (see December 2000-December 2001), and had been slated for a military tribunal (see July 3, 2003). Deal with Blair - The New York Times will suggest that the release of the four men is politically motivated and designed to bolster British Prime Minister Tony Blair, whose campaign to gather support for the Iraq war was damaged by the news of the military prosecution of Britons at Guantanamo. According to the Times, “Mr. Blair’s critics saw his inability to regain custody of a total of nine British detainees at Guantánamo as proof of his subjugation to Washington,” and the announcement of the men’s release apparently shows that Blair can stand up to the US. [New York Times, 10/25/2004]

British police investigate Mohammad Sidique Khan, who will be the head suicide bomber in the 7/7 London bombings later in the year (see July 7, 2005). In March 2004, Khan’s car had been in a crash and he had been loaned a courtesy car by an auto shop while it was being repaired. That same month, MI5 monitored Khan driving the loaned car with Omar Khyam, a key figure in the 2004 fertilizer bomb plot (see Early 2003-April 6, 2004 and February 2-March 23, 2004). On January 27, 2005, police take a statement from the manager of the auto shop. The manager says the car was loaned to a “Mr. S Khan,” and gives Khan’s mobile phone number and two addresses associated with him. MI5 had followed Khan to one of these addresses in February 2004 after Khan had met with Khyam and dropped him off at his residence (see February 2-March 23, 2004). Then, on February 3, 2005, an officer from Scotland Yard’s anti-terrorism branch asks questions to the company which had insured Khan’s car. The officer learns Khan registered the car in his own name and the name of his mother-in-law. None of this information will be presented in the 2006 investigation into the 7/7 bombings by the government’s Intelligence and Security Committee. This also contradicts repeated assertions by government officials that Khan’s name was not known before the bombings. The Guardian will comment when this information comes to light in 2007: “The revelation suggests Khan was being investigated much nearer to the London bombings than has been officially admitted. The discovery that Khan was reinvestigated the following year appears to contradict claims from MI5 that inquiries about him came to an end in 2004 after it was decided that other terrorism suspects warranted more urgent investigation.” [Guardian, 5/3/2007] In early 2004, MI5 classified Khan a suspect worth investigating, but went after higher priority suspects first (see March 29, 2004 and After). It is unknown if any more action is taken on him before the July bombings.

A June 2005 Guantanamo file on a relatively low-level Taliban detainee allegedly mentions in passing a February 2005 meeting of militant leaders in Quetta, Pakistan. According to intelligence reports referred to in the file, Mullah Omar, top head of the Taliban, leads the meeting. Other high-level Taliban leaders such as Mullah Akhter Mohammed Osmani also attend. But most interestingly, representatives from the Pakistani government and the ISI, Pakistan’s intelligence agency, are at the meeting as well. In the meeting, “Mullah Omar [tells] the attendees that they should not cooperate with the new infidel government (in Afghanistan) and should keep attacking coalition forces.” The Guantanamo file mentioning the meeting will be leaked to the public in 2011. [Joint Task Force Guantanamo, 6/3/2005 ; Guardian, 4/25/2011]

The Justice Department issues a secret opinion that countermands and contradicts the administration’s official policy that torture is “abhorrent” and will not be practiced by US military or law enforcement officials (see December 30, 2004). The secret opinion is, the New York Times writes two years later while publicly revealing its existence, “an expansive endorsement of the harshest interrogation techniques ever used by the Central Intelligence Agency.” The opinion gives explicit authorization to abuse detainees with a combination of physical and psychological abuse, including head-slapping, stress positioning, simulated drowning (“waterboarding”), and prolonged exposure to intense cold. New attorney general Alberto Gonzales (see November 10, 2004) approves the memo over the objections of deputy attorney general James Comey, himself preparing to leave the Justice Department after a series of battles over the legality of torture and the domestic surveillance program (see March 10-12, 2004). Comey says at the time that everyone at the department will be “ashamed” of the new opinion once the world learns of it. [New York Times, 10/4/2007]

After London’s Finsbury Park Mosque is handed back to its trustees, associates of radical imam Abu Hamza al-Masri attempt to take it back. The mosque had been controlled by Abu Hamza and his associates from 1997 (see March 1997), but it was closed following a police raid in 2003 (see January 20, 2003). As the trustees were the mosque’s original administrators, when it is allowed to reopen by the authorities, they are given theoretical control of it. However, when the trustees enter the building, they are greeted by what authors Sean O’Neill and Daniel McGrory will call a “reception committee” of around 40 men, led by “one of Abu Hamza’s well-known thugs.” Abu Hamnza’s men say they are taking the mosque back, but are forced to retreat by superior numbers, shouting they would rather see the mosque burn down than allow it to fall into the hands of bad Muslims. The trustees then post guards around the mosque. O’Neill and McGrory will comment, “Not for the first time in the troubled history of Finsbury Park, the Muslim community was left to combat the menace of Abu Hamza and his forces on their own, and to wonder when the authorities would make good their threat to deal with the preacher of hate.” [O'Neill and McGrory, 2006, pp. 279]

CIA Director Porter Goss tells the Senate: “Islamic extremists are exploiting the Iraqi conflict to recruit new anti-US jihadists. These jihadists who survive will leave Iraq experienced in, and focused on, acts of urban terrorism. They represent a potential pool of contacts to build transnational terrorist cells, groups and networks in Saudi Arabia, Jordan and other countries.” [New York Times Magazine, 9/11/2005]

Mohammad Sidique Khan passing through immigration control in Karachi, Pakistan, in February 2005. [Source: Public domain]British intelligence receives a report naming two people with extremist views who had traveled to Afghanistan. Apparently only their aliases are given, because the British intelligence agency MI5 tries and fails to discover who they are. Only after the 7/7 London bombings (see July 7, 2005) does it learn that one of them was Mohammad Sidique Khan, the head 7/7 suicide bomber. [Observer, 1/14/2007] Khan traveled to training camps in Pakistan several times, most recently from November 2004 to February 2005. He returned to Britain on the same flight as Shehzad Tanweer, another one of the 7/7 suicide bombers (see November 18, 2004-February 8, 2005).

A secret FBI report issued this month and later leaked to the press states, “Al-Qaeda leadership’s intention to attack the United States is not in question. However, their capability to do so is unclear, particularly in regard to ‘spectacular’ operations. We believe al-Qaeda’s capability to launch attacks within the United States is dependent on its ability to infiltrate and maintain operatives in the United States. To date, we have not identified any true ‘sleeper’ agents in the US.… Limited reporting since March indicates al-Qaeda has sought to recruit and train individuals to conduct attacks in the United States, but is inconclusive as to whether they have succeeded in placing operatives in this country. US Government efforts to date also have not revealed evidence of concealed cells or networks acting in the homeland as sleepers” ABC News notes that this seemingly contradicts the sleeper cell depiction seven men arrested in Lackawanna, New York, in 2002. It also differs from warnings by FBI Director Robert Mueller and other US officials, who have warned that sleeper cells are probably in place. [ABC News, 3/9/2005] In 2002, it was also reported that no sleeper cells can be found in the US (see March 10, 2002).

Senior defense officials say that a preliminary study commissioned by the Pentagon has concluded that authority over the CIA’s paramilitary units should not be transferred to the Pentagon. The study, conducted by the Booz Allen Hamilton law firm in McLean, Virginia, reviewed the 9/11 commission’s recommendation that CIA paramilitary operations be consolidated under Special Operations Command in Tampa, Florida. Booz Allen Hamilton’s conclusions were based on a series of tabletop war games in which veteran CIA officers and Special Operations soldiers “explored how each agency’s paramilitary units would respond to different contingencies, including threats involving terrorists and weapons of mass destruction and missions to train indigenous fighters or gain control of ungoverned territory,” the Washington Post reports. A senior defense official familiar with the study tells the newspaper, “If you take the very small paramilitary capabilities away from the CIA, in my view, it would limit their ability to conduct foreign intelligence activities which they are required by law to do.” Furthermore, he adds, “we don’t have the legal authorities to be doing what the CIA does, so getting all those assets doesn’t make any sense.” [Washington Post, 2/5/2005]

A meeting of tribesmen in Wana, South Waziristan, May 2004. [Source: Kamran Wazir]The Pakistani government signs a little-noticed agreement with Baitullah Mahsud, the chieftain of the Mahsud tribe in South Waziristan. Waziristan is in the tribal region of Pakistan near the Afghanistan border, and numerous media accounts suggest that Osama bin Laden and other top al-Qaeda leaders may be hiding out there. The deal, signed in the town of Sararogha and known as the Sararogha peace pact, prohibits forces in South Waziristan led by Abdullah Mahsud, another member of the same tribe as Baitullah Mahsud, from attacking the Pakistani army and giving shelter to foreign terrorists. However, it does not prevent these forces from attacking US troops across the border in Afghanistan. It also does not require these forces to surrender or register foreign terrorists in Waziristan. Abdullah Mahsud is a wanted fugitive in Pakistan and has pledged his loyalty to Taliban leader Mullah Omar. But as part of the deal his forces are even given some money to repay debts owed to al-Qaeda-linked foreign militants. As a result of this deal, the Pakistan army soon leaves South Waziristan entirely. A similar deal will be made with North Waziristan in September 2006 (see September 5, 2006). The area becomes a Taliban base to attack US and NATO troops across the border in Afghanistan. The number of Taliban attacks there will rise from 1,600 in 2005 to more than 5,000 in 2006. [Asia Times, 5/4/2005; Levy and Scott-Clark, 2007, pp. 433] Abdullah Mahsud was held by the US in the Guantanamo prison from December 2001 to March 2004 (see March 2004). In July 2007, renewed fighting between the Pakistani army and tribal militants will cause the Waziristan truce to collapse (see July 11-Late July, 2007). He will blow himself up to avoid capture a few days after the truce ends. [New York Times, 7/25/2007] The CIA will later claim that Baitullah Mahsud was involved in the assassination of former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto in December 2007. [Washington Post, 1/18/2008]

A report by the 9/11 Commission on the FAA and 9/11 is publicly released. The fact that the report reveals nearly half of all FAA daily briefings between April and early September 2001 mentioned al-Qaeda, bin Laden, or both causes headlines (see April 1, 2001-September 10, 2001). However, the report was actually completed in August 2004 but was held up by the Bush administration. Some speculate that the publication of the report was delayed until after the November 2004 presidential election to help Bush get reelected. For instance, 9/11 victim’s relative Carol Ashley states, “I’m just appalled that this was withheld for five months. That contributes to the idea that the government knew something and didn’t act, it contributes to the conspiracy theories out there.” Representative Henry Waxman (D-CA) asks for a hearing on whether the Bush administration played politics with the report’s release, but the Republican-controlled House of Representatives does not allow such a hearing. [Associated Press, 2/11/2005] Additionally, the released version of this report is heavily censored in some areas. The 9/11 Commission asserts that the whole report should be released, but the Bush administration is blocking their efforts to release the censored portions. Politicians, 9/11 victims’ relatives, open-government advocates, and others call for the release of the entire report, but to no avail. [New York Times, 2/11/2005]

John Negroponte. [Source: Public domain]President Bush nominates John Negroponte to be the first director of national intelligence, a new position created to oversee all the various US intelligence agencies. Negroponte has been serving as the US ambassador to Iraq for the previous year. Prior to that he had been the US ambassador to the United Nations and held a variety of other government positions. [New York Times, 2/17/2005] The nomination is controversial because, as the Los Angeles Times reports, “While ambassador to Honduras from 1981-85, Negroponte directed the secret arming of Nicaragua’s Contra rebels and is accused by human rights groups of overlooking—if not overseeing—a CIA-backed Honduran death squad during his tenure.” Additionally, “He also helped orchestrate a secret deal later known as Iran-Contra to send arms through Honduras to help the Contras overthrow the Sandinista government.” [Los Angeles Times, 3/26/2001] On April 21, 2005, the Senate will confirm Negroponte by a vote of 98 to two. In 2007, then-CIA analyst Valerie Plame Wilson will describe the establishment of a new position as a shocking blow to morale in the agency. Once Negroponte assumes the position, she will write, “the name ‘Central Intelligence Agency’ [becomes] a misnomer.” CIA employees were promised that the “new DNI structure would not be just an ‘extra bureaucratic layer’ over the CIA, but that’s exactly what it would become. It seemed to me that the White House was bent on emasculating the CIA by blaming it for the failures in Iraq and anything else they thought they could throw at the agency and have stick.” [Wilson, 2007, pp. 219] She will write of the announcement: “I remember standing in counterproliferation division’s large conference room in early 2005 when the creation of the DNI was announced to the division workforce. Our chief swore that the DNI would not be just another layer of useless bureaucracy—everyone acknowledged that we already had plenty of that. The veterans of intelligence reorganizations past made cynical comments under their breath.” Plame Wilson will observe that the reorganization of the US intelligence community under the DNI will be “an abysmal failure.” [Wilson, 2007, pp. 248]

Hunter S. Thompson, in a 1977 photo. [Source: Guardian]Hunter S. Thompson, writer and “gonzo” journalist, dies in an apparent suicide by gunshot. The day before, he had told a friend at the Toronto Globe and Mail that he had found evidence of explosives used in the collapse of the WTC on 9/11, and that he was worried for his safety. “Hunter telephoned me on Feb. 19, the night before his death,” the friend says. “He sounded scared.… He’d been working on a story about the World Trade Center attacks and had stumbled across what he felt was hard evidence showing the towers had been brought down not by the airplanes that flew into them but by explosive charges set off in their foundations. Now he thought someone was out to stop him publishing it: ‘They’re gonna make it look like suicide,’ he said.” The friend continues: “That’s how I imagine a tribute to Hunter S. Thompson should begin. He was indeed working on such a story, but it wasn’t what killed him.” [Toronto Globe and Mail, 2/26/2005] Thompson was in considerable pain from medical ailments and had been opening talking with friends about committing suicide. He wrote a suicide note four days earlier. [Rolling Stone, 9/8/2005]

The New York Times reports that, according to current and former government officials, there is “widening unease within the Central Intelligence Agency over the possibility that career officers could be prosecuted or otherwise punished for their conduct during interrogations and detentions of terrorism suspects.” The conduct is questionable because it is said to amount to torture in some cases (see Mid-May 2002 and After, Shortly After September 6, 2006 and March 10-April 15, 2007). At this time, only one CIA contractor has been charged with a crime, after a prisoner died in Afghanistan. However, at least half a dozen other investigations by the Justice Department and the CIA’s Inspector General are ongoing, and involve actions in Afghanistan, Iraq, and possibly “black sites” in other countries. An official says, “There’s a lot more out there than has generally been recognized, and people at the agency are worried.” [New York Times, 2/27/2005] Apparently due to these fears, some officers purchase legal insurance policies. [ABC News, 12/15/2007]

Philip Zelikow (second from left) with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice (left), and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert (right). [Source: Ron Sachs/Consolidated News Photos]Philip Zelikow, formerly the executive director of the 9/11 Commission, will serve as a senior adviser for Condoleezza Rice in her new position as secretary of state. His position, counselor of the United States Department of State, is considered equal to undersecretary of state. [Richmond Times-Dispatch, 2/28/2005] Rice says: “Philip and I have worked together for years. I value his counsel and expertise. I appreciate his willingness to take on this assignment.” According to author Philip Shenon, Zelikow tells his new colleagues at the State Department that it is “the sort of job he had always wanted.” [Shenon, 2008, pp. 418] 9/11 victims’ relatives groups had demanded Zelikow’s resignation from the 9/11 Commission, claiming conflict of interest, including being too close to Rice (see March 21, 2004).

Haji Bashir Noorzai, reputedly Afghanistan’s biggest drug kingpin with ties to the Taliban and al-Qaeda, had been arrested and then released by the US in late 2001 (see Late 2001), and then ignored when he wanted to make a deal with US in 2004 (see Autumn 2004). In spring 2005, the US again contacts him and offers a deal. Author James Risen explains, “The Americans asked Noorzai to come to the United States to negotiate a deal, and to the astonishment of nearly everyone involved in the case, he agreed. Noorzai flew on a regular commercial flight to New York, where he was met by federal agents. The Bush administration was so startled that he had actually agreed to come to the United States that it was not quite sure what to do with him.” Secret talks are held in New York City, resulting in Noorzai being indicted in April 2005. “By the summer of 2005, Noorzai was in jail and was talking, but questions remained about whether the Bush administration really wanted to hear what he had to say, particularly about the involvement of powerful Afghans and Pakistanis in the heroin trade.” [BBC, 4/26/2005; Risen, 2006, pp. 152-162]

“A few months” before the 7/7 London bombings (see July 7, 2005), journalist Ron Suskind interviews radical London imam Sheikh Omar Bakri Mohammed. Suskind had recently heard from a British intelligence official that Bakri “had helped [British domestic intelligence agency] MI5 on several of its investigations,” in Suskind’s words, and he asks Bakri about this. According to Suskind, Bakri looks flustered and says, “I’m upset you know this.” Asked why he helped the British, he replies: “Because I like it here. My family’s here. I like the health benefits.” In early 2007, Suskind calls Bakri on the phone. After the 7/7 bombings, Bakri moved from London to Lebanon (see August 6, 2005), but by the time Suskind reaches him, Bakri has moved again to Tripoli, Libya. Bakri admits that he misses Britain and his role there. He says that the British government misses him too, “whether they admit it or not.” He adds: “We were able to control the Muslim youth.… The radical preacher that allows a venting of a point of view is preventing violence. Now, many of us are gone or in jail, and we’ve been replaced by radical jihadis, who take the youth underground. You don’t see them until the day they vent with the bombs.” Suskind will later comment: “Bakri enjoyed his notoriety and was willing to pay for it with information he passed to the police.… It’s a fabric of subtle interlocking needs: the [British authorities] need be in a backchannel conversation with someone working the steam valve of Muslim anger; Bakri needs health insurance.” Bakri’s role as an informant will not be made public until Suskind mentions it in a book published in August 2008. Suskind will not make clear when Bakri’s collaboration with MI5 began or ended, or even if he was still collaborating when they spoke in early 2005. [Suskind, 2008, pp. 200-202] In 2002, Roland Jacquard, a French counterterrorism expert and government adviser, said that “every al-Qaeda operative recently arrested or identified in Europe had come into contact with Bakri at some time or other.” [Time, 5/27/2002]

By March 2005, senior officers in Scotland Yard’s anti-terrorist branch conclude that Britain is likely to be attacked by “home-grown” terrorists. One senior officer predicts that an attack could be mounted by Britons with bombs in backpacks, who would blow themselves up on the London subway. This is exactly what will occur in July (see July 7, 2005). However, Britain’s domestic intelligence agency MI5 sharply disagrees. In June, an assessment made by a group of top counterterrorism officials will conclude that no group has the intention or capability of attacking within Britain (see Mid-June 2005). [Guardian, 5/13/2006]

A State Department report on world drug production suggests that, as the Associated Press puts it, “Afghanistan has been unable to contain opium poppy production and is on the verge of becoming a narcotics state.” The area in Afghanistan devoted to poppy cultivation (the raw material for opium and heroin) in 2004 more than tripled the figure for 2003. The report suggests this situation “represents an enormous threat to world stability.” [Associated Press, 3/4/2005] Drug eradication efforts have been almost completely ineffectual. For instance, in May 2005 it will be reported that Afghanistan’s US-trained Central Poppy Eradication Force has destroyed less than 250 acres, well short of its original goal of 37,000 acres. [New York Times, 5/22/2005] The drug economy now accounts for between a third and half of the country’s economic output. The World Bank estimates that opium cultivation can generate at least 12 times as much income as alternative crops. [Slate, 5/18/2005]

Abu Bakar Bashir. [Source: US National Counterterrorism Center]Abu Bakar Bashir, allegedly the spiritual leader of Jemaah Islamiyah, al-Qaeda’s main affiliate in Southeast Asia, is acquitted of most charges in a trial in Indonesia. Bashir, a well-known radical imam, had been accused of involvement in the 2002 Bali bombings (see October 12, 2002) and 2003 Marriott Hotel bombing (see August 5, 2003). However, he is only convicted of one charge of criminal conspiracy, because the judges say he knew the bombers and his words may have encouraged them. Bashir is sentenced to 30 months in prison, but is released after serving only one year due to good behavior. In late 2006, the Indonesian supreme court will void his one conviction altogther. [New York Times, 3/4/2005; Associated Press, 12/26/2006] The New York Times will later report: “Legal observers here said the case against Mr. Bashir was weak. The strongest evidence linking him to the Bali terrorist attacks was never heard by the five-judge panel because of a decision by the Bush administration that the Indonesian government would not be allowed to interview two senior al-Qaeda operatives, Riudan Isamuddin, better known as Hambali, and Omar al-Faruq.” The CIA has been holding Hambali and al-Faruq in secret prisons since 2003 and 2002 respectively (see August 12, 2003 and June 5, 2002). [New York Times, 6/14/2006] One Indonesian counterterrorism official says: “We need[ed] Hambali very much. We [fought] to get access to him, but we have failed.” An unnamed Australian official complains that the US was hypocritical in pressing Indonesia to prosecute Bashir and then doing nothing to help convict him. [New York Times, 3/4/2005] Al-Faruq allegedly told the CIA that Bashir had provided logistical and financial support for several terrorist attacks, but he was also interrogated by techniques considered close to torture. The US allowed Indonesian officials to directly interrogate al-Faruq in 2002, but then prohibited any later access to him (see June 5, 2002). And shortly after Hambali’s arrest in 2003, President Bush promised to allow Hambali to be tried in Indonesia, but then failed to even give Indonesians any access to him (see October 23, 2003).

Dietrich Snell, the 9/11 Commission’s lead investigator into the origins and role of the Hamburg cell in the 9/11 plot, testifies in the German retrial of Mounir El Motassadeq. Snell tells a panel of judges that the 9/11 Commission concluded the Hamburg al-Qaeda cell members such as Mohamed Atta did not develop the idea of the 9/11 plot on their own, but were recruited by bin Laden during a visit to Afghanistan in late 1999. He claims, “Ultimately, we did not arrive at the conclusion that there was solid evidence of any contact” between the Hamburg cell members and al-Qaeda leaders about the plot before the Hamburg group’s trip to Afghanistan. These findings contradict the prosecutor’s case against El Motassadeq and also run counter to media accounts suggesting the Hamburg cell was involved in the plot before that time. According to German law, prosecutors must prove that important elements of the conspiracy took place in Germany in order to get a conviction. Snell largely fails to explain how the Commission came to that conclusion, saying the sources remain classified. [Washington Post, 3/9/2005]

By 2005, al-Qaeda-linked imam Abu Qatada has been held in a high-security prison in Britain for three years without being charged. On March 11, 2005, he is released after a British court rules that the law under which he was being held allowing indefinite detention without trial is a struck down as a violation of human rights. A government official calls Abu Qatada a “truly dangerous individual,” but says there is no choice but to release him. Abu Qatada is given stringent bail conditions, including a daily curfew, electronic tagging, and a prohibition on preaching or leading prayers. On August 11, he is arrested again. British authorities announce they are planning to extradite him to Jordan, where he was sentenced to life in prison in absentia in 2000 for a role in the planned millennium bombings there. [London Times, 3/11/2005; Fox News, 8/11/2005] As of 2008, Abu Qatada is still in a British prison, appealing the extradition order.

Six Algerians are convicted in France of trying to blow up the US embassy in Paris. The ringleader is a top Islamist militant named Djamel Beghal, who was arrested in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) based on a US tip-off in 2001 (see July 24 or 28, 2001). Beghal is sentenced to ten years in prison, his associate Kamel Daoudi gets nine years, and the four others get between one and six. The sentences are for criminal association relating to a terrorist enterprise, although the alleged would-be suicide bomber, Nizar Trabelsi, is not charged or tried in France, and few details of the plot are offered in court. Trabelsi was arrested in Belgium shortly after 9/11 (see September 13, 2001), and is in prison there on other charges (see September 30, 2003). Beghal and the others say they are innocent, and Beghal alleges that the confession based on which the arrests were made was tortured out of him in the UAE. [Washington Post, 3/16/2005]

On March 18, 2005, Mouhannad Almallah is arrested in Madrid, Spain. The next day, his brother Moutaz Almallah is arrested in Slough, near London. Both are accused of involvement in the 2004 Madrid train bombings (see 7:37-7:42 a.m., March 11, 2004). [Independent, 3/20/2005] The arrests come less than two weeks after it was widely reported that in 2004 police had found a sketch of the New York Grand Central Station terminal in an apartment where Mouhannad was living, leading to suspicions that he was involved in a planned attack on New York. [El Mundo (Madrid), 3/2/2005] It appears that Moutaz was under surveillance in Spain for al-Qaeda links since 1995, and Mouhannad since 1998 (see November 1995). Mouhannad was arrested shortly after the Madrid bombings, but then released (see March 16, 2004). Moutaz will be extradited to Spain in March 2007, but he has yet to be put on trial. [Reuters, 3/8/2007] In 2007, Mouhannad will be sentenced to 12 years in prison for a role in the Madrid bombings (see October 31, 2007).

Zacarias Moussaoui wants captured al-Qaeda leaders Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and Ramzi bin al-Shibh to testify in his trial. However, an appeals court in April 2004 had only allowed indirect access to those prisoners, and further appeals court decisions in September and October 2004 had reaffirmed that ruling. On this date, the US Supreme Court, without comment, refuses to hear a further appeal. This was expected because the Supreme Court typically doesn’t hear such appeals until after the case goes to trial. [Washington Post, 9/14/2004; Washington Post, 10/14/2004; Washington Post, 3/22/2005] Moussaoui’s guilty plea one month later (see April 22, 2005) may lead to a new round of appeals. Presiding judge Leonie Brinkema has indicated she believes witness access is “highly relevant to the sentencing phase,” which will begin next, and could constitute “mitigating evidence” that could make the difference between Moussaoui receiving the death penalty or not. [Washington Post, 4/23/2005]

US News and World Report publishes a cover story about FBI Director Robert Mueller’s attempts to reform his agency. Insiders say that the senior leadership tends to withhold bad news from Mueller. Says one anonymous FBI official, “[Mueller] is so isolated and shielded.” The article notes that there has been a “head-spinning exodus of top-tier executives - five officials have held the top counterterrorism job since 9/11; five others held the top computer job in 2002-2003 alone.” Mueller has reduced the autonomy of the field offices and centralized all major terrorism investigations at FBI headquarters. The 9/11 Commission in the 2004 final report had few recommendations on how to reform the FBI, largely leaving the issue to Mueller’s discretion. 9/11 Commissioner Timothy Roemer says that in retrospect, “[Mueller] knows how to play the system, how to play Congress, and he certainly worked the 9/11 Commission.” [US News and World Report, 3/28/2005]

After the 7/7 London bombings (see July 7, 2005), an official at the Saudi Arabian embassy will tell a British journalist that before the attack Saudi Arabia provided intelligence to Britain that was sufficient to dismantle the plot, but British authorities failed to act on it. The information is quite detailed, containing names of senior al-Qaeda members said to be involved in the plot, including Kareem al-Majati, whose calls the Saudis have been intercepting and who may have been in contact with lead bomber Mohammad Sidique Khan. Al-Majati is said to have been involved in attacks in Morocco (see May 16, 2003) and Madrid (see 7:37-7:42 a.m., March 11, 2004), before being killed in a shoot-out in Saudi Arabia in April 2005. Calls from Younes al-Hayari, an al-Qaeda logistics expert and al-Majati’s lieutenant, are also traced to Britain. Al-Hayari will die in a shootout in Saudi Arabia four days before the 7/7 bombings. Details of calls, e-mails, and text messages between an al-Qaeda cell in Saudi Arabia and a group in Britain are passed on to the British intelligence agencies MI5 and MI6. After the bombings, Saudi ambassador to Britain Prince Turki al-Faisal issues a statement, “There was certainly close liaison between the Saudi Arabian intelligence authorities and the British intelligence authorities some months ago, when information was passed to Britain about a heightened terrorist threat to London,” although it is not clear if this statement refers to this warning, another Saudi warning about a possible attack in Britain (see December 14, 2004-February 2005), or both. The public response by British authorities when asked about this alleged warning changes over time; initially they deny having received it at all, but after the issue is reignited by King Abdullah in 2007 (see October 29, 2007), they will say that the warning was not specific enough to act on. [Observer, 8/7/2005; New Statesman, 11/1/2007]

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